My mother was very desirous that the whole family should pass the night with my father; but he opposed this, observing to her how much he needed some hours of repose and quiet. She asked at least to be allowed to see him next morning, to which he consented. But, when we were gone, he requested that we might not be permitted to return, as our presence afflicted him too much. He then remained with his confessor till midnight, when he went to bed....
Such was the life of my father during his rigorous captivity. In it were displayed piety, greatness of mind, and goodness; — mildness, fortitude, and patience, in bearing the most infamous insults, the most malignant calumnies; — Christian clemency, which heartily forgave even his murderers; — and the love of God, his family, and his people, of which he gave the most affecting proofs, even with his last breath, and of which he went to receive the reward in the bosom of his almighty and all-merciful Creator.11
The Abbé received permission from the authorities to say Mass first thing in the morning, with one of the officials bringing what was needed from a neighboring church. In the meantime, he heard the King’s confession
and gave him spiritual assistance. At dawn on January 21, 1793, Abbé said the Mass of the virgin-martyr Saint Agnes. The King knelt throughout the liturgy on a flat cushion that he habitually used at his prayers. He received Holy Communion with the greatest devotion. The Abbé left him in silent prayer as the mass ended, and he went to remove his vestments. Then he sat with the King and together they recited the Divine Office. The King used not only the breviary of the archdiocese of Paris, but was accustomed to praying the Office of the Order of the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. “My God,” said the King,” how blessed I am in the possession of my religious beliefs! Without my faith, what would I now be? But with it, how sweet death appears to me. Yes, there dwells on high an incorruptible Judge, from Whom I shall receive the justice refused to me on earth.” 12
The King spoke to his valet Cléry. “You will give this seal to my son, and this ring to the Queen.” He removed his wedding ring and handed it to Cléry. “Tell her that I part from her with pain. This little packet contains locks of the hair of my family; you will give her that also. Tell the Queen, my dear sister, and my children that, although I promised to see them again this morning, I have resolved to spare them the ordeal of so cruel a separation. Tell them how much it costs me to go away without receiving their last embraces once more. I bid you to give them my last farewell.”13 He returned to the priest but they were frequently interrupted in their discussion by the guards. When the bells of Paris tolled eight o’clock there came a loud knock on the door. It was the commissary Santerre, the head of the National Guard, who had escorted the Abbé up to the King’s room the night before. “Monsieur, it is time to go,” he announced.
“I am busy,” said the King, firmly and abruptly. “Wait for me. In few minutes I shall be with you.” Louis XVI closed the door on Santerre. At that moment, his calm seemed to vanish. He threw himself at the Abbé’s feet. “Tout est consommé,” he cried, quoting John 19:30, which can be translated as “It is finished” or “It is consummated.” “Monsieur, please give me your final benediction and pray God that He will sustain me until the end.”14 The Abbé made the sign of the cross over the prostrate King. He got to his feet, composed and collected, and opened the door. Several guards and commissaries were standing there; none of them removed their hats. The King, who wore a white jacket and grey breeches, refused the offer of an overcoat, but put on his three-cornered hat with its red, white, and blue cockade. He said good-bye to Cléry who, bathed in tears, unabashedly asked for the King’s blessing.
“Messieurs,” said the King, “I wish that Cléry might stay with my son, who is used to his care.” The only response was a stony silence. He handed his last will and testament to an official who refused to take it.
“I am charged only with conducting you to the scaffold,” the man proclaimed. Another official quietly took the document.
“I hope Cléry may be allowed to enter into the Queen’s . . . into my wife’s service,” the King said. They did not reply. “Let us proceed,” said the King.15
They left the tower. As they crossed the courtyard, the King twice looked back at the prison where his family was confined. They climbed into a coach. Two gendarmes insisted on riding with them, so they could have no private conversation. The King sank into a profound silence, until the Abbé offered him his breviary. Together they recited the seven penitential psalms. The streets of Paris were ominously quiet, except for the sound of the drums. All windows were shuttered and doors closed along the route of the King’s via dolorosa. Cordons of soldiers, standing four deep, lined the streets. They came to the Place de la Révolution, formerly called Place de Louis XV, after the King’s grandfather. A statue of the old King had once stood there. The Royal Family had been forced to watch the dismemberment of the statue, before being imprisoned in the Temple.
Thousands of people had come to see the execution of the King. A large space had been left around the scaffold, the crowd spilling out from it as far as the eye could see. The coach stopped. The King spoke to the two gendarmes before they jumped from it.
“Gentlemen, I recommend to you this good man.” He was referring to Abbé Edgeworth. “Take care that no one insults him after my death. I charge you to prevent it.” He spoke in majestic tones.
“Yes, yes, we will take care of him,” one said, in a tone which the Abbé said made him freeze. 16
As Louis XVI climbed out, the crowd began to buzz, “There he is! There he is!” At the foot of the scaffold steps, three guards came towards the King, trying to remove his jacket. He shook them off, and himself removed his hat, his jacket and neckcloth, unbuttoning his shirt and arranging it so his neck was exposed. The guards then made as if to seize his hands.
“What are you attempting?” cried the King, pulling away from them.
“To bind you,” they answered.
“To bind me!” exclaimed the King. “No, I shall never consent to that! Do what you have been ordered, but you shall never bind me!” A knight must never be bound like a criminal, as if he might try to run in terror from the face of death. The guards called on others to help them. The Abbé feared they might strike the king, which for him would be worse than dying. The King looked steadily at the priest, mutely begging for a word of advice.
“Sire,” said the priest, “in this new insult, I see only another trait of resemblance between Your Majesty and the Savior Who is about to be your reward.”
According to the priest, the King raised his eyes to Heaven, as if his gaze had pierced the clouds and glimpsed the Kingdom which awaited him. “You are right,” he said. “Nothing less than His example should make me submit to such a degradation.” He turned to the guards. “Do what you will. I must drink the chalice to the dregs.”17
They bound him, and the executioner Sanson cut his hair. With the Abbé holding his arm, he mounted the scaffold. At the top of the stairs, he suddenly left the Abbé, and strode with a firm step to the edge of the platform. With a nod, he silenced the drummers. He began to speak, his words ringing throughout the square. “I die innocent of all the crimes of which I am accused. I pardon those who have occasioned my death, and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed will never fall upon France . . . .” The drums began again. The executioners grabbed the King, dragged him over to the guillotine, and threw him roughly upon the plank. The blade fell.
Abbé Edgeworth cried, “Ascend to Heaven, Son of St. Louis!” He afterwards did not recall saying it, being in a state of shock. The crowd was silent as the King’s head was held high for them to see. While the executioner walked around the scaffold with the head raised aloft, he made obscene gestures. Then cries of “Long live the Republic!” were heard, and hats were thrown into the air. People rushed forward, dipping handkerchiefs into the blood of Louis XVI. The Abbé, dazed, noticed that some of the blood from the severed head had splashed upon his clothes. Meanwhil
e, Sanson was selling locks of the King’s hair, pieces of his jacket, his buttons, his hat. Someone began to play the Marseillaise, and people joined hands, dancing and cavorting around the guillotine. Abbé Edgeworth was able to slip through the crowd and found his way on foot through the streets of Paris to the house of the King’s lawyer and faithful friend, Malesherbes. The priest gave him an account of the King’s death, and the old man wept.18
“Louis XVI at his execution, Jenuary 21, 1793”
“Marie-Antoinette on trial”
“Marie-Antoinette and Madame Royale in prison”
23 The Agony
“I ask you priests of God, to please say a Mass for my soul’s salvation. I beg all of you standing here to forgive me the harm that I may have done you. Please pray for me.” ―Saint Joan, the Maid of Lorraine
During Louis’ trial, Antoinette was unable to eat, and rapidly lost weight, so that her dresses had to be taken in. The morning of the King’s execution, the Queen, Élisabeth, Thérèse, and Louis-Charles were up at dawn waiting for the King to come once more, but by ten o’clock, the beating of drums and distant cheers told them they had waited in vain. As they recovered their shattered composure, the Queen led her daughter and her sister-in-law in kneeling before Louis-Charles, and saying together: Vive le Roi! By March of 1793, far away in the Vendée, the seven year old was also being proclaimed king by the peasants and nobles who rebelled against the Revolution; the leaders of the Revolution took note of it. She who had once longed for a lack of etiquette now insisted upon her son sitting at the head of the table and having him served first because he was King. Her actions did not pass unnoticed.
Upon her husband’s execution, Antoinette petitioned for mourning garments for herself, her children and her sister-in-law. She devoted her days at the Temple to the education of her children, along the curriculum laid down by her husband before he was taken away. However, she never accompanied them on their daily walk in the garden, because to do so meant she would have to pass Louis’ door, which she could no longer bring herself to do. They continued to be forbidden to hear Mass or receive the sacraments. The Queen would ask her sister-in-law Madame Élisabeth, to read the words of the Mass to her from the missal. Madame Royale later wrote of that difficult time:
We had now a little more freedom; our guards even believed that we were about to be sent out of France; but nothing could calm my mother's agony. No hope could touch her heart; and life and death became indifferent to her. She would sometimes look upon us with an air of pity which made us shudder. Fortunately my own affliction increased my illness to so serious a degree, that it made a diversion in the mind of my mother. My physician Brunier, and Lacase, a surgeon, were sent for. They cured me in the course of a month.1
By the time spring came, Louis-Charles had fallen ill, due to the unnatural confinement of prison life, and the limited amount of fresh air he was allowed to take, he who was accustomed to being so often outdoors. The first time he became ill, it was probably from worms, due to the unsanitary conditions of the tower. Also, the family was suffering the loss of Louis XVI. The King had played games with the little boy; he felt his father’s loss keenly. In May, Louis-Charles began to have a pain in his side, and headaches. Antoinette was anxious, remembering her Louis-Joseph, who had died at seven years old. When summer came, Louis-Charles recovered, and soon Temple rang once more with the sounds of his exuberance. In June, however, he injured himself on a stick he was using as a hobby horse. Maman asked the guards to summon a physician at once, which they did, a Doctor Pipelet, who carefully examined him, scrupulously recording the cause of the accident, which had caused some bruising to his private parts. Unfortunately, the accident would be used against Antoinette in the course of her trial as evidence that she was abusing her son.
Meanwhile, one of the municipal guards, named Toulan, had become infatuated with Antoinette. She had once shown him the locks of hair of her two children who had died. He was transformed from a hardened Jacobin to the most devoted champion of the crown. It was a good thing, because other than faithful Cléry, the only servants they had were a certain Monsieur and Madame Tison, who were very coarse people and spies of the Committee of Public Safety. The other guards mocked them, blowing smoke in the faces of the Queen and Madame Élisabeth as they walked by. Toulan managed to get her husband’s wedding ring and seal, which the commissaries had confiscated from Cléry. Toulan retrieved them from the Council Chamber, afterwards shouting, “Thief! Thief!” louder than anyone else. At Antoinette’s request, he arranged for the ring and seal to be smuggled from the country to the Comte de Provence. Toulan, who also supplied her with information about the war, was eventually reported to the Committee of Public Safety by Madame Tison, and arrested. With every Austrian victory, with every French defeat, Antoinette was coming closer to her condemnation.
One day in late June 1793, Madame Tison burst in upon the Queen, throwing herself at her feet. “Madame, I ask your Majesty’s pardon! How miserable I am! I have caused your death, and that of Madame Élisabeth!” Antoinette tried to raise the distracted woman from the ground, and calm her but the woman was beyond hysterical. The guards dragged her away. The next day she was incarcerated in a mental asylum.2 On July 3 they prepared for bed, completely unsuspecting. Around ten o’clock that night came a loud pounding at the door. A group of commissaries burst into the room. One began very officiously to read a long decree, announcing the decision of the Committee of Public Safety to remove “Charles Capet” from his mother’s care. The Queen ran to her little boy, who was asleep in his bed. He woke up, crying, and clung to her. In a few seconds, Élisabeth and Thérèse joined her, and with their arms they formed a barricade around the child. For an hour, they held them off. She screamed, begged, and pleaded. Then the intruders threatened to kill both of her children before her eyes if she did not give Charles to them. The Queen decided it was better to let him go peacefully rather than be injured or killed. His aunt and sister dressed him. Antoinette said to him: “My child, they are taking you from me; never forget the mother who loves you tenderly, and never forget God! Be good, gentle, and honest, and your father will look down on you from heaven and bless you.”
“Have you done with this preaching?" said the chief commissioner.
“You have abused our patience finally,” said another; "the nation is generous, and will take care of his education.” Louis-Charles kissed his mother, Marie-Thérèse and Élisabeth. He was still sobbing as the men led him into the darkness.3 His sister Madame Royale later described the scene thus:
On the 3d of July, they read to us a decree of the Convention, that my brother should be separated from us, and placed in the most secure apartment of the tower. As soon as he heard this sentence pronounced, he threw himself into the arms of my mother, and entreated, with violent cries, than to be separated from her. My mother was stricken to the earth by this cruel order; she would not part with her son, and she actually defended, against the efforts of the officers, the bed in which she had placed him. But these men would have him, and threatened to call up the guard, and use violence. My mother exclaimed, that they had better kill her than tear the child from her. An hour was spent in resistance on her part, and in prayers and tears on the part of all of us.
At last they threatened even the lives of both him and me, and my mother’s maternal tenderness at length forced her to this sacrifice. My aunt and I dressed the child, for my poor mother had no longer strength for any thing. Nevertheless, when he was dressed, she took him and delivered him herself into the hands of the officers, bathing him with her tears, foreseeing that she was never to see him again. The poor little fellow embraced us all tenderly, and was carried off in a flood of tears. My mother charged the officers to ask the council-general for permission to see her son, were it only at meals. They engaged to do so. She was overwhelmed with the sorrow of parting with him, but her horror was extreme when she heard that one Simon (a shoemaker by trade, whom she had seen as a municipal offic
er in the Temple), was the person to whom her unhappy child was confided. She asked continually to be allowed to see him, but in vain. He, on his side, cried for two whole days, and begged without intermission to be permitted to see us.4
The horror of the women prisoners knew no bounds when they heard Louis-Charles singing drunken obscene ditties about the Queen. Antoinette was in a state of panic and near despair. The royal women were able to climb a narrow staircase to the very top of the tower. There Antoinette would stand for hours staring through a narrow crack in the partition, hoping for even the tiniest glimpse of her child. The dread of what might be happening to him at any moment almost drove her out of her mind. Only her faith kept her going, and her determination to survive in case they might all be rescued by the Austrians. In the meantime, she turned to prayer and trust in God, following the Church calendar through the daily Mass readings in her missal.
Late on the night of August 1, 1793 officials and guards arrived to take Antoinette from the Temple to the Conciergerie, the prison which was the antechamber to the guillotine. The guards made the Queen dress in their presence. After embracing Élisabeth, she clasped Marie-Thérèse in her arms, encouraging the teenager to have courage and faith, obey her aunt, and take care of her health. Before leaving, she hurriedly gathered a few belongings into a large handkerchief, including a glove belonging to Louis-Charles, and a lock of his hair. The guards made her empty her pockets before taking her away. As she left the room Antoinette bashed her head on the door frame. One of the commissioners asked her if she was hurt and she replied “Nothing can hurt me now.”5
Antoinette was placed in a particularly cold, damp cell in the medieval fortress on the Seine. It had been a royal palace, the Palais de la Cité, in the days of Saint Louis IX, who had built the gothic masterpiece called the Sainte-Chapelle to house the Crown of Thorns. The Palais de Justice was there, where for centuries the Paris parlement met, to be replaced by the Revolutionary Tribunal during the French Revolution. Men and women were kept separately, although the women were at liberty during the day. The Queen was held apart from all, although anyone could come and watch her; once again in her life she found herself with little privacy. The conditions of the cell were calculated to break her health.
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