In addition to the warnings previously received, a rumor had reached the palace on the preceding evening that the Duc d'Orleans had come down to Versailles in disguise,[4] a movement which could hardly have an innocent object; but so little heed had been given to the intelligence, or, it may perhaps be said, so little was it supposed that, if such an attack was really meditated, any warning would have been given, that Monsieur de Chinon found the palace empty. Louis had gone to hunt in the Bois de Meudon; Marie Antoinette was at the Little Trianon. But messengers easily found them. The queen came in with speed from her garden, which she was destined never to behold again; the king hastened hack from his coverts; and by the time that they returned, the Count de St. Priest, the Minister of the Household, had their carriages ready for them to retire to Rambouillet, and he earnestly pressed the adoption of such a course. Louis, as usual, could not make up his mind. He sat in his chair, repeating that it was a moment to think seriously. "Rather," said Marie Antoinette, "say that it is a time to act promptly." He would gladly have had her depart with her children, but she refused to leave him, declaring that her place was by his side; that, as the daughter of Maria Teresa, she did not fear death; and after a time he changed his mind and ceased to wish even her to retire, clinging to his old conviction that conciliation was always possible. He believed that he had won over even the worst of the mob, and that all danger was past.
Versailles witnessed a strange scene that morning. The moment that the mob reached the town, they forced their way into the Assembly Hall, where Maillard, as their spokesman, after terrifying the members with ferocious threats against the whole body of the Nobles, demanded that the Assembly should send a deputation to the king to represent to him the distress of the people, and that a party of the women should accompany it. Louis consented to receive them, and when they reached the palace, the women, disorderly and ferocious as they were, were so awed by the magnificence and pomp which they beheld, and by the actual presence of the king and queen, that they could only summon up a few modest and humble words of petition, and one, a young and pretty girl of seventeen, fainted with the excitement. One of the princesses brought her a glass of water: she recovered, and, as she knelt to kiss the king's hand, Louis kissed her himself, and, transported by his affability, she and her companions quit the apartment, uttering loud cheers for the king and queen. But this had not been the impression which their leaders had intended them to receive; and, when they reached the streets, their new-born loyalty so exasperated their comrades that the soldiers had some difficulty in saving them from their fury.
Meanwhile, the mob increased every hour. They occupied the court-yard of the palace, roaring out ferocious threats, the most sanguinary of which were directed against the queen. The President of the Assembly moved that the members should adjourn and repair to the palace for the protection of the royal family, but Mirabeau resisted the proposal, and procured its rejection; and when a large party of the members went, as individuals, to place their services at the king's disposal, he mingled with the rioters, tampering with the soldiers, and urging them to espouse what he called the cause of the people. As it grew dark, the crowd grew more and more tumultuous and violent. The Body-guard, who were all gentlemen, were faithful and fearless; but it began to be seen that none of the other troops, not even the regiment of Flanders, could be trusted. Some of them even fired on the Body-guard, and mortally wounded its commander, the Marquis de Savonieres; while Louis, adhering to his unhappy policy of conciliation even at such a moment, sent down orders to the officer who succeeded to the command that the men were not to use their weapons, and that all bloodshed was to be avoided. "Tell the king," replied M. d'Huillier, "that his orders shall be obeyed; but that we shall all be assassinated."
The mob grew fiercer when it became known that La Fayette and his regiment were approaching. No one knew what course he might take, but the ringleaders of the rioters resolved on a strenuous effort to render his arrival useless by their previous success. Guns were fired, heavy blows were dealt on the railings of the inner court-yard and on the gates; and the danger seemed so imminent that the mob might force its way into the palace, that the deputies themselves besought the king to delay no longer, but to retire to Rambouillet. He was still irresolute, and still trusting to his plan of conciliating by non-resistance. The queen, though more earnest than ever that he should depart, still nobly adhered to her own view of duty, and refused to leave him; but, hoping that he might change his mind, she gave a written order to keep the carriages harnessed, and to prepare to force a passage for them if the life of the king should appear to be in danger; but, she added, they were not to be used if she alone were threatened.
At last, when it was nearly midnight, La Fayette arrived. With a singular perverseness of folly, at a time when every moment was of consequence, he had halted his men a mile out of the town to make them a speech in praise of himself and his own loyalty, and to administer to them an oath to be faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king; an oath needless if they were inclined to keep it; useless, if they were not; and in the state of feeling then common, mischievous in the order in which he ranged the powers to which he required them to profess allegiance. At last he reached the palace. Leaving his men below, he ascended to the king's apartments, and, laying his hand on his heart, assured the king that he had no more loyal servant than himself. Louis was not given to sarcasm: yet some of the bystanders fancied that there was a tone of irony in his voice when in reply he expressed his conviction of the marquis's sincerity; and perhaps La Fayette thought so too, for he proceeded to harangue his majesty on his favorite subject of his own courage; describing the dangers which, as he affirmed, he had incurred in the course of the day. After which he descended into the court-yard to assure the soldiers that the king had promised to accede to their wishes; and then returned to the royal apartments to inform the king that contentment was restored, and that he himself would be responsible for the tranquillity of the night.
The royal family, exhausted with the fatigues of so terrible a day, retired to rest, the queen expressly enjoining her ladies to follow her example. Fortunately they were too anxious for her safety to obey her, and, with their own attendants, kept watch in the room outside her bed-chamber. But La Fayette, in spite of the responsibility which he had taken upon himself, felt no such anxiety. He declared himself tired and sleepy; and, leaving the palace, went to a friend's house to ask for a bed.[5] Yet he well knew that the crowd was still assembled around the palace, and was increasing in violence. Though the night was stormy and wet, the rioters sought no shelter except such as was afforded by a hurried resort to the wine-shops in the neighborhood, where they inflamed their intoxication, and from which they soon returned to renew their savage clamor and threats, increasing the disorder by keeping up a frequent fire of their muskets. Throughout the night the Duc d'Orleans was briskly going to and fro, his emissaries scattering money among the rioters, who seemed to have no definite purpose or plan, till, as day began to break, one of the gates leading into the Princes' Court was seen to be open. It had been intrusted to some of La Fayette's soldiers, and could not have been opened without treachery. The crowd poured in, uttering fiercer threats than ever, from the belief that their prey was within their reach. There was, in truth, nothing between them and the staircase which led to the royal apartments except two gallant gentlemen, M. des Huttes and M. Moreau, the sentries of the detachment of the Body- guard on duty, whose quarters were at the head of the staircase in a saloon opposite to the queen's chamber. But these brave men were worthy of the best days of the French army. The more formidable the mob, and the greater the danger, the more imperative to their loyal hearts was the duty to defend those whose safety was intrusted to their vigilance; and with so dauntless a front did they stand to their posts that for a moment the ruffians recoiled and shrunk from attacking them, till D'Orleans himself came forward, waving to them with his hand a signal to force the way in, and pointing out to them which way
to take.
What, then, could two men effect against such a multitude? Des Huttes perished, pierced by a hundred pikes, and torn into pieces by his blood- thirsty assailants. Moreau, with equal valor, but with better fortune, backed up the stairs, fighting so desperately as he retreated that he gave his comrades time to barricade the doors leading to the queen's apartments, and to come to his assistance. As they drew him back, terribly wounded, into the guardroom, De Varicourt and Durepaire took his place. De Varicourt was soon slain, but Durepaire, a man of prodigious strength and prowess, held the assassins at bay for some time, till he too fell, reduced to helplessness by a score of deep wounds; when he, in his turn, was replaced by Miomandre. His devotion and intrepidity equaled that of his comrades; he was eminently skillful also in the use of his weapons, and with his own hand he struck down many of his assailants, till he was gradually forced back by numbers, when he placed his musket as a barrier across the door-way, and thus still kept his enemies at bay, while he shouted to the queen's ladies, now separated from him by but a single partition, to save the queen, for "the tigers with whom he was struggling were aiming at her life."
In the annals of the ancient chivalry of the nation it had been recorded as the most brilliant feat of Bayard, that, on a bridge of the Garigliano, he had for a while, with his single arm, stemmed the onset of two hundred Spaniards; and that glorious exploit of the model hero of the nation had never been more faithfully copied and more nobly rivaled than it was on this morning of shame and danger by Miomandre and his intrepid comrades, as they successively stepped into the breach to fight against those whom he truly called, not men, but tigers. It was but a brief moment before he too was struck down; but he had gained for the ladies a respite sufficient to enable them to secure the safety of their royal mistress. They roused her from her bed, for her fatigue had been so great that she had hitherto slept soundly through the uproar, and hurried her off to the apartments of the king, who, having in been just similarly awakened, was coming to seek her; and in a few minutes the whole family was collected in his antechamber; while the Body-guard occupied the queen's bedroom, and the rioters, balked of their intended victim, were pillaging the different rooms into which they had been able to make their way. Luckily, La Fayette was still absent: he was having his hair dressed with great composure, while the mob, for whose contentment and orderly behavior he had vouched, was plundering the royal palace and seeking its owners to murder them; and in his absence the Marquis de Vaudreuil and a body of nobles took upon themselves the office of defenders of the crown, and, going down to the court-yard, reproached the National Guard with their inaction at such a moment of danger, and with their manifest sympathy with the rioters. At first, out of mere shame, the National Guard attempted to justify themselves: "they had been told," they said, "that the Body-guard were the aggressors; that they had attacked the people." "Do you pretend to believe," said the gallant marquis, "that two hundred men have been mad enough to attack thirty thousand ?" The argument was irresistible; they declared that if the Body-guard would assume the tricolor, they would stand by them as brothers. And, by a reaction not uncommon at such times of excitement, the two regiments became reconciled in a moment. As no tricolor cockades could be procured, they exchanged shakos, and, in many cases, arms. And presently, when the Coup-tetes, after mutilating the bodies of two of the Body-guard who had been killed on the previous evening, were preparing to murder two or three more who had fallen into their hands, the National Guard dashed to their rescue, shouting out, with a curious identification of their force with the old French army, that "they would save the Body-guard who saved them at Fontenoy," and brought them off unhurt.
Balked of their expected prey, the rioters grew more furious than ever; in useless wrath they kept firing against the walls of the palace, and shouting out a demand for the queen to show herself. She, with her children, was still in the king's apartment, where the princesses, the ministers, and a few courtiers were also assembled. Necker, in an agony of terror and distress, sat with his face buried in his hands, unable to offer any advice; La Fayette, who had just arrived, dwelt upon the dangers which he had run, though no one else knew what they were, and assured the king of the power which he still possessed to allay the tumult, if the reasonable demands of the people (as he called them) were granted. Marie Antoinette alone was undaunted and calm; or, at least, if in the depths of her woman's heart she felt terror at the sanguinary and obscene threats of her ruffianly enemies, she scorned to show it. When the firing began, M. de Luzerne, one of the ministers, had quietly placed himself between her and the window; but, while she thanked him for his devotion, she begged him to retire, saying, with her habitually gracious courtesy, that it was her place to be there,[6] not his, since the king could not afford to have so faithful a servant endangered. And now, holding her little son and daughter, one in each hand, she stepped out on the balcony, to confront those who were shouting for her blood. "No children!" was their cry. She led the dauphin and his sister back into the room, and, returning to the balcony, stood before them alone, with her hands crossed and her eyes looking up to heaven, as one who expected instant death, with a firmness as far removed from defiance as from supplication. Even those ruthless miscreants were awed by her magnanimous fearlessness; not a shot was fired; for a moment it seemed as if her enemies had become her partisans. Loud shouts of "Bravo!" and "Long live the queen!" were heard on all sides; and one ruffian, who raised his gun to take aim at her, had his weapon beaten down by those who stood near him, and ran some risk of being himself sacrificed to their indignation. But this impulse of respect, like other impulses of such a people, was short-lived, and presently the multitude began to raise a shout, which expressed the original purpose which had led the majority to march upon Versailles. "To Paris!" was the cry, and again La Fayette volunteered his advice, urging the king to comply with the request. By this time Louis had learned the value of the marquis's loyalty. But he had no alternative. It was evident that the rioters had the power of compelling compliance with their demand. And accordingly he authorized the marquis to promise that he would remove his family to Paris, and a few minutes afterward he himself went out on the balcony with the queen, and himself announced his intention, with the view of giving his act a greater appearance of being voluntarily resolved upon.
Soon after midday he set out, accompanied by the queen, his brother the Count de Provence, his sister the Princess Elizabeth, and his children. It was a strange and shameful retinue that escorted the King of France to his capital. One party of the rioters, with Maillard and another ruffian named Jourdan, the chief of the Coupe-tetes, at their head, had started two hours before, bearing aloft in triumph the heads of the mangled Body-guards, and combining such hideous mockery with their barbarity that they halted at Sevres to compel a barber to dress the hair on the lifeless skulls. And now the royal carriage was surrounded by a vast and confused medley; market-women and the rest of the female rabble, with drunken gangs of the ruffians who had stormed the palace in the morning, still brandishing their weapons, or bearing loaves of bread on their pike-heads, and singing out that they should all have enough of bread now, since they were bringing the baker, the bakeress, and the baker's boy to Paris.[7] The only part of the procession that bore even a decent appearance was a small escort of 'different regiments-the Guards, the National Guards, and the Body-guards; many of the latter still bleeding from the wounds which they had received in the conflict and tumult of the morning. A train of carriages containing a deputation of the members of the Assembly also followed; Mirabeau himself having just earned a motion that the Assembly was inseparable from the king, and that wherever he was there must be the place of meeting for the great council of the nation. Yet, in spite of the confidence which their presence might have been expected to diffuse among the mob, and in spite of the hopes of coming plenty which the rioters themselves announced, the royal party was not even yet safe from further attacks. Some ruffians stabbed at the royal carriage as it p
assed with their pikes, and several shots were fired at it, though fortunately they missed their aim and no one was injured.[8]
To the queen the journey was more painful than to any one else. A few weeks before she had congratulated Mademoiselle de Lamballe on not being a mother-perhaps the bitterest exclamation that grief and anxiety ever wrung from her lips; and now the keenest anxieties of a mother were indeed added to those of a queen. The procession moved with painful slowness. No provisions had been taken in the carriage, and the little dauphin was suffering from hunger and begging for some food. Tears, which her own danger could not bring to her eyes, flowed plentifully as she witnessed the suffering of her child. She could only beg him to bear his privations with patience; and she had the reward of the pains she had always taken to inspire him with confident in her, in the fortitude with which, for the rest of the day, he bore what to children of his age is probably the severest hardship to which they can be exposed.[9]
So vast and disorderly was the procession that it was nine o'clock at night before it reached Paris. Bailly again met the royal carriage at the barrier, and, re-assuming the tone of coarse insult which he had adopted on the king's previous visit, had the effrontery to describe the day so full of horror to every one, and of humiliation and agony to those whom he was addressing, as a glorious day. It was at such moments as these that Louis's impassibility assumed the character of dignity. He disdained to notice the mayor's insolence, and briefly answered that it was always with pleasure and with confidence that he found himself among the inhabitants of his good city of Paris. He proceeded to the Hotel de Ville, where the council of civic magistrates was sitting; and where the president addressed him in language which afforded a marked contrast to that of the mayor, calling him "an adored father who had come to visit the place where he could meet with the greatest number of his children." And it seemed as if Bailly himself had become in some degree ashamed of his insolence; for now, when Louis desired him, in reply to the president's address, to repeat the answer which he had made to him at the barrier, he merely said that the king had come with pleasure among the Parisians. "The king, sir," interrupted the queen, "added, 'and with confidence.'" "Gentlemen," said Bailly, "you hear her majesty's words. You are happier in doing so than if I myself had uttered them." The whole company burst into one rapturous cheer, and at their request the king and queen showed themselves for a few minutes at the windows, beneath which, late as the hour was, a vast multitude was still collected, which received them with vociferous cheers. And then the royal family, quitting the Hotel, drove to the Tuileries, where their attendants had been hastily making such preparations as a few hours allowed for their reception.
The Life of Marie Antoinette Page 31
