Marie Antoinette: The Journey

by Antonia Fraser

  She was nevertheless entirely composed as she stood in her widow’s weeds, the worn black dress patched by Madame Larivière, and took the oath in the name of Marie Antoinette of Lorraine and Austria, widow of the King of France, born in Vienna. She described her age as being “about thirty-eight” (the Queen was in fact two and a half weeks away from her birthday). She then looked about her at the courtroom, with what a hostile newspaper, L’Anti-Fédéraliste, called “the serenity that habitual crime gives” but which was in fact the natural dignity in public inculcated since childhood. From time to time the Queen moved her fingers over the arm of her chair “as though over the keyboard of her piano”; the diamond rings that she used to play with had been confiscated in the course of the searches following the Carnation Plot.20

  The accused was allowed to sit down in an armchair on a little platform that put her on view, although the market-women, behind the balustrades, protested vociferously that the Woman Capet ought to remain standing so that they could see her. The Tribunal’s motive in granting this mercy was more prudent than kind; it would not have done for the prisoner to faint or collapse during the long hours of cross-examination that lay ahead, thus invoking unnecessary sympathy. Marie Antoinette merely murmured: “Surely people will soon tire of hearing about my weaknesses.”

  The first witness of the forty who would be called set the tone for much of what was to follow.21 Laurent Lecointre was a former draper who had been second in command of the National Guard at Versailles during the events of October 1789. In his prolonged evidence Lecointre described feasts and orgies that had taken place at Versailles over a period of ten years, culminating in the notorious banquet of 1 October 1789—at none of which, of course, he had been present. Cross-examined by Herman, Marie Antoinette gave a series of short, non-committal replies which equally set the tone for her responses: “I do not believe so,” “I don’t remember,” “I have nothing to say in reply.” With regard to those nocturnal meetings with “the Polignac” at which the passing of money to the Emperor was planned: “I have never been present at such meetings. The wealth amassed by the Polignacs was due to the paid positions they held at court.”

  When Herman pressed her on the subject of Louis Capet’s séance of 23 June 1789 and accused her of masterminding his speech, she was more explicit. It had become clear from her preliminary interrogation that the link between her evil counsels and the King’s evil actions was one that the prosecution intended to demonstrate. “My husband had great trust in me,” replied Marie Antoinette, “so that he read me his speech but I did not allow myself to make any comment.” As to the idea of assassinating the majority of the people’s representatives at this period with bayonets—a fantasy of the prosecution: “I never heard talk of anything like that.”

  Many of the witnesses who followed failed to rise above the level of scurrilous gossip or hearsay, when they were not purely inconsequential. The alleged discovery of wine bottles under the Queen’s bed after she left the Tuileries on 10 August 1792 was supposed to prove that she had deliberately made the Swiss Guards drunk in order to provoke a massacre of the French people. A maid called Reine Milliot reported a chat with the Comte (actually Duc) de Coigny in 1788 when he bemoaned the amount of gold that the Emperor was receiving because it would ruin France; she also testified that the Queen had planned to kill the Duc d’Orléans and had been reprimanded by the King. One Pierre Joseph Terrasson, employed at the Ministry of Justice, described how the Queen had cast “the most vindictive look” upon the National Guards who escorted her back from Varennes, which proved to him that she was determined on vengeance.

  The testimony of Hébert was more serious.22 He, after all, had the evidence taken from “young Capet” at his command. The products of his searches of the Temple were scarcely impressive—a picture of a pierced heart inscribed with the words Jesus miserere nobis or a hat in the room of Madame Elisabeth which had belonged to her dead brother. But the words of Louis Charles about La Fayette’s involvement in Varennes (fabricated) and the gathering of outside intelligence while they were all in the Tower had more potential. Then he moved in for the kill. The physical condition of young Capet had noticeably deteriorated and Hébert was able to supply the reason: his mother and his aunt had taught him pollutions indécentes. Details followed, as a result of which there could be no doubt that there had been an incestuous relationship between mother and son.

  After that Hébert stressed the deference with which young Capet had been treated after his father’s death, when he was seated at the head of the table and served first. “Did you witness it?” asked Marie Antoinette, making no comment on the shocking substance of Hébert’s speech. Hébert agreed that he had not, but all the municipal officers certified that it had taken place. An examination concerning the Carnation Plot and Michonis’s role in it all followed. It was in the course of this that one of the jurors intervened. “Citizen President,” he said, “I ask you to point out to the accused that she has not responded to the facts related by Citizen Hébert, regarding what took place between her and her son.” So Herman put the question.

  It was a dramatic moment, as all contemporary accounts, however hostile, agreed. Marie Antoinette’s marble composure deserted her. “If I have not replied,” she said in a tone quite changed from the politely indifferent one she had been using, “it is because Nature itself refuses to respond to such a charge laid against a mother.” The court record noted that here the accused appeared to be deeply moved. “I appeal to all mothers who may be present,” she went on. A frisson went through the courtroom—a frisson of sympathy. As for the fickle market-women, some of them cried out in outrage that the proceedings ought to be stopped.

  “Did I do well?” Marie Antoinette asked Chauveau-Lagarde in a low voice. He soothed her; she only had to be herself and she would always do well. But why the question? “Because I heard one woman say to her neighbour: ’See how arrogant she is.’” The Queen’s spirit in the face of such an intolerable slur was all too easily mistaken for disdain. And there was one juror, Doctor Souberbielle, who murmured scornfully: “A mother like you . . .”23

  The rest of the day and evening—the first two sessions lasted until 11 p.m. with a short break between them—produced less startling revelations. In fact very little in the way of tangible evidence was produced, with the Queen steadfastly refuting anything and everything that was put to her. Over Varennes, for example, she continued to deny the involvement of La Fayette, whose coincidental departure from the Tuileries after the King’s coucher was thought to be highly suspicious. She answered all the other detailed questions laconically. For example, one query concerned the escape: “How were you yourself dressed?” She replied: “In the same dress I wore at my return.”

  There was one intriguing moment when the name of the man who had purchased “the famous carriage” was raised.

  “It was a foreigner,” said Marie Antoinette.

  “Of which nation?”

  “Swedish.”

  “Wasn’t it Fersen who lived in Paris . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  Interestingly, no more was made of Fersen’s involvement in the escape, suggesting that his relationship to the ci-devant Queen had not reached a wide audience.24 The day ended with the examination of the two Richards and the gendarme Gilbert about the Carnation Plot, but once again no actual evidence was produced of Marie Antoinette’s intent to escape and once again she admitted nothing.

  The second session began at eight o’clock the following morning before Rosalie could bring the Queen her breakfast. It was 15 October, the Feast of St. Teresa; a day of rejoicing in her childhood, it had been the name-day of her mother and in her adult life, that of her daughter. Now she was to spend her time in the courtroom, fasting until the late-afternoon break when Rosalie Lamorlière, aware that Marie Antoinette had had nothing to eat, brought in some of her special bouillon. Even then the maid’s gesture was only partially successful. On a whim a girlfriend of one of the
gendarmes, who wanted to boast of having met the former Queen, decided to serve her herself; in transporting the bouillon, she managed to spill half of it.25

  The first witness was Charles Henri d’Estaing, once Governor of Touraine and a distinguished admiral who had spent much of his later life at Versailles.26 He was pressed on the question of another putative royal flight—that of 5 October 1789, which had been stopped by the National Guard. Actually he bore witness that the Queen had refused to go, saying “avec un grand caractère” (determination) that if the Parisians came to assassinate her, she would die at the feet of the King. Marie Antoinette interrupted at this point. It was true. They had wanted the Queen to go, on the grounds that she was the only one in danger, but she had given the response quoted by d’Estaing.

  Then Simon was called, to confirm revelations made by Louis Charles: how the Commissioner Dangé had taken him in his arms and in the presence of his mother declared: “I wish you were King in place of your father.” Furthermore the boy had been treated as the King at table.

  Finally, and more importantly, because for a moment it seemed that some documentary proof was about to be offered, the Queen was questioned about “the Polignac”: had she corresponded with her since her detention? “No.” Had she signed vouchers to enable her to draw on funds from the Civil List? “No.” It was Fouquier-Tinville’s turn to interrupt. Her denial was useless, for the vouchers signed by her would shortly be produced. Or rather, since they had been temporarily mislaid, evidence would shortly be heard from someone who had seen them.

  This witness—François Tisset, who had gone through the Civil List papers after the sack of the Tuileries—deposed that he had seen the Queen’s signature for sums of 80,000 livres, as well as other papers relating to large sums signed by the King, payments for Favras, Bouillé and others. Marie Antoinette pounced. What date was on the documents? One was 10 August 1792 and Tisset could not remember the other one. She could hardly have dated anything 10 August, replied the Queen scornfully, since, following the attack on the palace, she had been at the National Assembly since eight o’clock that morning.

  Some of the evidence produced was more pathetic than treacherous. A little packet was shown to Marie Antoinette which she had brought from the Temple to the Conciergerie: “Those are locks of hair of my children, the living and the dead, and of my husband.” A paper with figures written on it was to teach her son maths. Portraits were shown; one was of “Madame de Lamballe,” said Marie Antoinette. No one commented. Others proved to be of the Princesses (of Hesse) “with whom I was brought up in Vienna.” Over the expenses of the Petit Trianon—which, incidentally, she was accused of building as well as decorating although it had been built in the previous reign—the former Queen did at last give a little ground. “Perhaps more was spent than I would have wished.” Payments had mounted, little by little, and no one wished more than her to understand how it came about.

  On one subject, however, Marie Antoinette was absolutely resolute. She had never met Jeanne Lamotte.

  “You persist in denying that you knew her?”

  “My intention is not to make a denial, but to tell the truth; that is what I persist in stating.”

  When she sat for Kucharski’s pastel portrait in the Temple, had she used the opportunity to receive news of what was going on in the Convention? “No. He was simply a Polish painter who had lived in Paris for twenty years.” Other replies were equally staunch. As to Louis Capet’s allegations that La Fayette (and Bailly) had been involved in Varennes: “It is extremely easy to make a child of eight say anything you want,” replied Marie Antoinette significantly, no doubt having in mind the incestuous “revelations” of the previous day.

  Not all the witnesses exhibited the same spirit. While Doctor Brunier denied that he had exhibited all the “servilities” of the ancien régime in treating the royal children,*113 Commissioner Dangé was more cautious. After he had denied making that fatal royalist whisper into the ear of Louis Charles, he was asked his opinion of the accused. If she was guilty, he replied, she must be judged. Was she a patriot? No. Did she want there to be a Republic? No.

  The fortieth witness was followed by a final cross-examination of the prisoner. It was now getting on for midnight. Yet further charges of subverting the royal bodyguards and congratulating the Marquis de Bouillé on the “massacre” at Nancy in 1790 were followed by a strange, almost nostalgic reference to her past. Since her marriage, had not Marie Antoinette conceived the project of reuniting (French) Lorraine and Austria? She had not.

  “But you bear the name.”

  “Because one has to bear the name of one’s country,” replied Marie Antoinette.

  Accused once again of teaching her son royalist precepts and putting him at the head of the table, to be served as King, she answered that he had been at the bottom of the table and she had served him herself.

  At the very last, she was asked if she had anything further to say in her defence. “Yesterday I did not know who the witnesses were to be,” answered Marie Antoinette. “I was ignorant of what they would say. Well, no one has articulated anything positive against me. I finish by observing that I was only the wife of Louis XVI and I had to conform to his wishes.” These were her last words to the court. Marie Antoinette, a woman in terrible health, had been in the courtroom something like sixteen hours, with only a few sips of bouillon to sustain her, having spent fifteen hours there the day before. Nevertheless these words focused on the real issue.

  During the proceedings, it had been the constant harping on Marie Antoinette’s “evil ascendancy” over the “feeble character” of Louis Capet that more than anything else revealed the insubstantiality of the judicial case against her. The traditional image of female weakness, a queen consort, devoid of responsibility and thus presumably of guilt for state actions, had to be replaced by that of a viciously powerful and dominating Messalina. Naturally the Queen herself denied Louis’ feebleness: “I never knew him to have such a character.” But the prosecution, by insisting to the contrary, could transfer the culpability of the former King entirely to the former Queen, and since the King’s guilt had been proved in court, logically there was no need to prove that of the Queen further. The fact that nothing, as she herself said, had really been proved against her—there were charges of foreign correspondence and intrigues, but no evidence to support them—then became irrelevant.

  Fouquier-Tinville now spoke at some length to a silent courtroom, followed by Chauveau-Lagarde. The prisoner was then taken out to an ante-room while the president of the Tribunal summed up for the jurors.27 Marie Antoinette was therefore not in a position to listen to Herman’s summation to the jurors. The key passage occurred halfway through. Her chief crimes were listed as follows: her secret agreements with foreign powers, including her brothers, émigré Princes and treacherous generals; her shipping of money abroad to help them; and lastly her conspiring with these powers against the security of the French state, both at home and abroad. “If verbal proof was required,” declared Herman, “then let the accused be paraded before the people of France; but if it was a question of material proof, that would be found among the papers seized from Louis Capet, listed already to the Convention.” These papers were, however, not produced.

  Ignorant of what was being said, ignorant too of Hébert’s secret command to the Convention—“I must have the head of Antoinette”—the former Queen allowed herself to be buoyed up with the adrenalin that a bold performance, given against the odds, bestows. We have Chauveau-Lagarde’s word for it that she was convinced she would be ransomed and sent abroad because nothing had been proved against her. There were others present of the same opinion; Madame Bault heard someone say: “Marie Antoinette will get away with it; she answered like an angel. She will be deported.”28 None of these people had experience of revolutionary justice or what was in effect a show trial, with the verdict predetermined. When she was brought back, she was handed the verdict of the jury, and told to read it. Sh
e was found guilty on all counts. Fouquier-Tinville then asked for, and was granted, the death penalty.

  Asked if she had anything to say Marie Antoinette simply shook her head. It showed true courage, according to Chauveau-Lagarde, not to admit for a moment the shock she felt. Her head—the forfeit head of Antoinette—was held majestically high in a final display of dignity (or disdain) as she passed the barriers where the people were. To the sympathetic, the former Queen appeared to be in some kind of trance, so that she no longer saw or heard anything to do with her surroundings. She had to be prevented from slipping in the yard on the way back to her cell. It was past four o’clock in the morning and bitterly cold.

  Marie Antoinette was now officially allowed writing materials. She used them to address a “last letter” to Madame Elisabeth, heading it “October 16. 4:30 in the morning.”

  “I have just been condemned to death, not to a shameful death, that can only be for criminals, but in order to rejoin your brother. Innocent like him, I hope to demonstrate the same firmness as he did at the end. I am calm, as people are whose conscience is clear. My deepest regret is at having to abandon our poor children; you know that I only lived on for them and for you, my good and tender sister.”29

  Believing (wrongly) that Marie Thérèse had been separated from her aunt, her mother dared do no more than send her blessing. There were instructions to both children to care for each other, and the elder in particular to look after the younger. As for Louis Charles: “Let my son never forget his father’s last words . . . never try to avenge our deaths.” Marie Antoinette then raised the anguishing matter of the boy’s allegations. “I know how much pain this child must have given you. Forgive him, my dear sister; think of his age and how easy it is to make a child say what one wants, even things he doesn’t understand.” It was the same point about Louis Charles’s impressionable nature that she had made to the incoming Governess, the Marquise de Tourzel, and again at her trial.