The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette

by Carolly Erickson

  His irritation makes no sense, because he hates the Tuileries palace as he often says and has begun to hate the Parisians too, for all his fine talk about being the loving father of his people. He wears around his neck a medal they gave him not long ago. It says “Restorer of French Liberty and True Friend of His People.” Stanny laughs at it, which only vexes Louis more.

  January 9, 1791

  I have been ill. All the fear and tension we experience daily and my futile efforts to change Louis’s mind about leaving have exhausted me and brought on the fever and cough that have kept me in bed for so long.

  At first I was worried that I might have been given some sort of slow-working poison, the kind that weakens a person gradually day after day until they finally die. Dr. Concarneau has decided that is unlikely. He thinks it is a rheum in my chest brought on by cold weather (the palace is very chilly and our supply of coal is low this winter) and my general weakness. I am too thin. My cheeks used to puff out but now they are sunken inwards and my bosom, once quite large, has shrunk and all my gowns have had to be taken in a good deal. Axel says he quite likes my white hair, but I know he does not admire the dark circles under my eyes or the deep lines that are etching themselves into my skin. I look like what I am: an ill woman marked by anguish and worry.

  “My dear, my dearest dear,” Axel said, taking my face between his hands when he returned to the Tuileries from Turin to find me ill in bed, “all this trouble is destroying you with worry. You have been carrying France on your shoulders. I long to bring you peace. I must get you out of France, somehow.”

  I put my arms around his neck and buried my face in his shoulder. I felt so glad, so relieved to see him. He had just arrived, and was still in his travel-stained clothes, his breeches spattered with mud and wet with rain. He had his big wolfhound Malachi with him—he takes the dog everywhere he goes now—and Malachi too came up to us and pushed his warm pointed nose into my hand.

  Axel sat with me awhile, talking to Dr. Concarneau when he came in to see me and hugging the children when Madame de Tourzel brought them in to say goodnight. I told him that my efforts to arrange a betrothal for Mousseline had come to nothing.

  “They will not let her go,” I said. “The Spanish king was willing to make an offer for her hand, to marry his son. But the assembly has forbidden any of us to leave French soil. They say this decree is for our safety, to prevent us from being kidnapped or held hostage. But the truth is they want us for hostages of their own. We are more useful to them here!”

  “Mousseline is so like you,” Axel said when Madame de Tourzel had taken the children to their rooms. “And Louis-Charles too. We must make your cheeks rosy again like his.”

  He told me that his meetings with Charlot in Turin had been disappointing. Charlot was gathering men and had managed to raise a small amount of money. But he was many months, perhaps even years, away from assembling a force large enough to invade France and defeat the National Guard.

  “Your brother Leopold must join in, and bring his Austrian troops,” he said. “Otherwise the forces opposed to the revolution will have no chance whatsoever of succeeding.”

  I sighed. My bad leg had begun to ache, and I felt very tired. I lay back against the pillow and gently Axel tucked me in, pulling the blankets up around my chin.

  “Never fear, little angel,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “I have another plan. Give me a month and it will be ready. Then we will put the bloom backinto those cheeks again.”

  February 24, 1791

  I went to Axel’s rented house and there, waiting in the courtyard, was my beautiful green coach!

  Of course I was eager to go inside and I was amazed at how large it seems, and how spacious it is. A lever is touched and a dining table comes up out of the floor. There are cupboards and a larder for food and a stove for warmth and for cooking.

  I climbed up beside Axel on the coachman’s seat and we set off along the Vincennes road.

  “Where did you learn to drive a carriage?” I asked him as the horses gathered speed, the rhythmic clopping of their hooves loud on the dirt road.

  “My father’s coachman, old Sibke, taught me when I was just a boy. He started me off with ox-carts and then went on to four-horse rigs and finally carriages. But this heavy thing is the largest coach I have ever attempted to drive. I pity the poor horses, dragging such weight. They will have to be changed every fifteen miles, you realize, once the journey is under way. It may be difficult to provide that many strong fresh horses at such frequent points along the route. If need be, I will buy them.”

  “You have already been too generous.”

  Axel shrugged.

  “Many others have made contributions. The king of Spain, Italian princes, well-wishers in Vienna and St. Petersburg and Stockholm. Even a certain former circus acrobat who told me to tell you she hopes you will be safe and prays for your swift emigration.”

  “Thank Mrs. Sullivan for me.”

  “I will.”

  “There is one thing I must askof you, Axel,” I said as we turned into a parkand began the long return journey to Axel’s house.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t come with us.”

  “But you need my protection.”

  “General Bouillé promises to meet us with his troops and escort us across the border soon after we leave the outskirts of Paris.”

  “But you may meet with outlaws, renegade soldiers, bands of revolutionaries.”

  “We will be armed. Besides, the smaller our party is, the less likely we are to attract attention.”

  “This carriage,” Axel replied, patting the seat beside him, “cannot help but attract attention. You can be certain of that.”

  “I want you to leave France by a different route than the one we take. If the worst happens and our escape fails, you must remain free, not captured along with us and most likely executed. I am selfish about this. I could not bear to lose you. I would die. I know I would.

  “Besides,” I went on, “you must travel alone and by a different route so that if we should be captured, you can continue to work on our behalf. We need you.”

  “At least let me drive you out of Paris, to make certain you leave the palace safely.”

  “All right. But then you must go on alone.”

  “It won’t be long, you know. Soon we’ll both be out of France, no longer answerable to this monstrous assembly which has taken over everything.” He took my hand and raised it to his lips.

  “Soon, my little angel, all this long nightmare will be over for us both.”

  March 2, 1791

  Finally, after much effort, I have convinced Louis to agree to Axel’s escape plan. He is in very low spirits and frightened, yet he has seen letters from both my brother Leopold and his own cousin Charles telling Axel very frankly that they will do nothing until we are out of France and cannot be held hostage by the assembly. So Louis realizes that we now have no choice but to leave.

  He is angry that the assembly has now decreed that he should no longer be called king but “Chief Public Functionary.”

  June 19, 1791

  Tomorrow we go. I have been afraid to write in this journal for the past several months, fearing that if it should fall into the wrong hands and be read, our escape plan would fail. Now, however, we are ready to leave and so far we have been fortunate.

  “Are you ready for the play?” I asked the children tonight when they came to me to say goodnight.

  Louis-Charles giggled. “I get to be a girl, and wear a dress, and have ribbons put into my hair.”

  “And you mustn’t laugh,” Mousseline told him. “We have to be onstage all the time, just like in a play, and do a good job of pretending.”

  “And who am I?” I asked them.

  “You are our governess. You give us our lessons.”

  “And how do you address your governess?”

  Louis-Charles looked puzzled.

  “We call her madame,” said Mousseline. “
We do not call her maman.”

  “What do we call papa?”

  “Monsieur Durand. He is M. Durand, the valet.”

  “Now, who is your maman, just for tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Madame de Tourzel is our maman,” said Louis-Charles staunchly. “Only her name isn’t Madame de Tourzel any longer. It’s Baroness Korff, and she comes from Russia.”

  I embraced him and kissed him. “Perfect!” Then I embraced Mousseline, my beloved daughter. My heart aches for her. If only I had been able to arrange a marriage for her, and send her away to some foreign court!

  All is in readiness for tomorrow. Axel was here earlier, bringing us our official passports and making one last check on our timetable for departure. If all goes as we hope, in two days we will be across the frontier and on friendly ground, surrounded by troops loyal to the monarchy, out of danger and with all the troubles and fears of the past two years behind us for good.

  FOURTEEN

  June 27, 1791

  I am going to set down here, while it is all still fresh in my mind, the details of our journey, a journey unlike any other I have ever taken, and one whose outcome I could never have foreseen.

  We started off after midnight on the night of June 20 in the greatest secrecy, having managed, through much cleverness on Axel’s part, to elude the palace guards. Once we were all safely in the carriage we rode as quickly as the horses could carry us past village after village, stopping only to exchange our weary horses for fresh ones. It was very dark and the roads were bad. We dropped into deep ruts and had to stop several times while the postilions got down and moved fallen trees and branches out of our path. There was no moon. The children slept, leaning up against me, but my fears kept me awake. I kept thinking of the Committees of Search that were said to ride along every road and imagining that I heard hoofbeats approaching in the distance.

  Madame de Tourzel was very brave, keeping up her role as the mistress of the traveling party and looking very elegant in her borrowed finery. (She is of noble birth but has never been well-to-do, and had to borrow a black silk traveling gown from Loulou, who is about her height.) Louis, in the dark overcoat and plain black hat of a valet, with no shiny buckles on his shoes and no jeweled ornaments on his hat or rings on his fingers, drank from his brandy flask and then proceeded to doze quietly as the hours passed. I sat nervously on the edge of the white velvet seat, watching out the window and praying that nothing would happen to impede our progress.

  The night wore on, the sky began to lighten and we stopped at the town of Meaux to change horses. I covered my face with the veil of my brown hat to ensure that no one would recognize me. Louis kept his head down on his chest, either sleeping or pretending to sleep. The people in the vicinity of the post-house stared at our carriage, because it was very large and expensive-looking, but did not look rudely in the windows as the Parisians customarily did and did not appear to be suspicious of us. Some of them, I was glad to see, wore the white cockades of the pro-monarchist party in their hats. Accustomed as I was to seeing only the red, white and blue cockades of the republicans, the sight of the white cockades cheered me and I wished I could tell the good citizens of Meaux who we were. But of course I did nothing to betray our true identities, and before long we were on the road again.

  The children were hungry and I fed them some veal and bread from the large carriage larder, which I had ordered filled before we left. Louis awoke and ate too, and Madame de Tourzel nibbled on a wedge of cheese. I could eat nothing, I was far too anxious.

  “Only a few more hours,” Louis told us all. “Soon we will be at Châlons and from there it is only a short way to Pont-Sommevel where the cavalry will be waiting for us. They will take us the last fifty miles or so to the border. No one will be able to stop us.”

  I sat back against the soft padded cushion of the seat and sighed. Only a few more hours. I hoped I could nap—or at least rest.

  But I had hardly dropped off to sleep when I felt a tremendous jolt and heard the horses neigh shrilly. We shuddered to a halt. I jerked awake and looked out the window. We were on a narrow bridge above a swift stream, with expanses of forest stretching away on both banks. The horses had fallen, the carriage leaned to one side and I guessed we had broken an axle. Louis was swearing. The coachman and all three postilions were struggling to free the horses where they were pinned under the broken harness.

  All was confusion and it took an hour at least before we were able to go on, slowly, to the next village. It was a costly delay. We were very late reaching Châlons, and even later reaching the next village beyond it, Pont-Sommevel, where we expected to be met by the cavalry detachment.

  Something had gone terribly wrong. If the cavalry had been there, they had chosen not to wait for us. But what if they had never been there at all? What if they had met with a Committee of Search and had turned around and galloped away? We had no way of knowing. Were we in danger? Should we turn back? Or would we meet the horsemen further on?

  We decided to go ahead, but Louis got out his musket and loaded it and kept it on his lap, beneath the folds of his coat.

  The day was very hot, and the dust of the road blew in through the open carriage windows, making us cough. We coughed our way through the next village, and the next, aware that we were drawing more and more attention to ourselves. I kept my veil lowered and Louis kept his large round hat pulled down low over his face, but by the time we reached the village of Ste.-Ménéhould we were so alarmed and tense that our agitation was noticed and the villagers began to stare at us curiously. I saw not a single white cockade in the village, only the tricolor republican cockades everywhere.

  There were soldiers scattered here and there, some of them quite drunk. One officer came up to our carriage.

  “Nothing has gone as arranged,” the man whispered hurriedly. “I cannot be seen talking to you, or we will be suspected.”

  He moved off quickly, but not before we had, in fact, drawn the suspicion of some of the villagers. I saw them staring, muttering, becoming all the more curious when some of the soldiers mounted their horses and began following our carriage as we rolled on through the village.

  We now had an escort, albeit a very small one, and we were getting closer to the border with each slow mile we traveled. But it was getting dark by this time, and the road turned hilly and the ascent was difficult. Our coachman was tired, having been driving since midnight the previous night, and our own nerves were worn thin. Louis-Charles was fretful, Mousseline sick to her stomach and complaining.

  I brought out fruit, beef and cheese and a bottle of wine and we ate in anxious silence, as the carriage lurched and lumbered through the gathering darkness.

  We knew that we were in a very hostile area, one patrolled by German and Swiss mercenaries in the pay of Austria who preyed on the villagers and bullied them, demanding food and liquor and money. Axel had warned us before we left the palace that all travelers coming from the direction of the capital were routinely stopped and questioned in this region, and we were prepared to be questioned.

  We were not prepared, however, for the road to be blockaded and our forward progress halted completely.

  We arrived in the village of Varennes and found that some of the local officials had closed off the road so that we could not pass on through. There was a hubbub in the street. Late as it was, people were coming out of their houses and raising the alarm. I saw National Guard soldiers mustering, holding their muskets and standing to attention. I wondered whether our own small cavalry escort would gallop off into the woods and abandon us.

  “It’s no good,” Louis said to me in an undertone. “Someone has betrayed us.”

  An official came up to the carriage, opened the door, and began to question us, holding a candle up to our faces and demanding that I raise my veil and Louis remove his hat. They ignored Madame de Tourzel entirely, and I saw that she had quietly begun to cry.

  “Who are you, and what is your destination?”

 
“I am Monsieur Hippolyte Durand, valet to Baroness Korff,” Louis asserted, attempting to brazen out our imposture.

  Our questioner snorted. “You are not! You are Louis Capet, Chief Public Functionary of France, former king. I recognize you. Your fat face is on the worthless promissory notes issued from your treasury.”

  He looked over at me, and I could not return his gaze. I felt sick. My stomach churned, there was a terrible pain in the back of my neck and I suddenly needed to relieve myself.

  “And you, lady, are the Chief Public Functionary’s wife, the one who has been robbing us for years, taking bread from our children and spending our money on diamonds for yourself! Tell me, where are all those diamonds now? Are they in this carriage?” He began rummaging under our seats, pushing us roughly aside while he searched for treasure. I clutched Mousseline, who clung to me, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Your trunks will be searched,” the official said. “And you will not be allowed to proceed further. Get down out of this carriage now.”

  With a sigh Louis heaved his large bulk out of the carriage, which rocked and lurched with each of his heavy steps. The musket he had been keeping on his lap fell to the ground, and the official picked it up.

  “Was it your intent to fire on the people’s representatives?” he demanded to know.

  “I would have protected my family, had the need arisen.”

  “I believe it was your intent to incite a counter-revolution. I believe the Chief Public Functionary has become an enemy of the people of France.”

  In response to this Louis reached up and pulled out, from under the collar of his plain linen shirt, the medal he wore on a chain around his neck. He held it out to his questioner so that the man could read the inscription: “Restorer of French Liberty and True Friend of His People.”

  “This was presented to me,” Louis said with dignity, “by the people of Paris.”

  “Some friend you are! Attempting to flee the country, leaving your people to the mercy of the cruel troops who harass us! Abandoning France in her hour of need!”