The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France - Charles Duke Yonge
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M. Bertrand expressed his warm approval of the wisdom of such a policy,
but thought it so important to know how far the queen coincided in her
husband's sentiments that he ventured to put the question to his majesty.
The king assured him that he had been speaking her sentiments as well as
his own, and that he should hear them from her own lips; and accordingly
the queen immediately granted the new minister an audience, in which,
after expressing, with her habitual grace and kindness, her feeling that,
by accepting office at such a time, he was laying both the king and
herself under a personal obligation, she added, "The king has explained to
you his intentions with respect to the Constitution; do not you think that
the only plan for him to follow is to be faithful to his oath?"
"Undoubtedly, madame." "Well, you may depend upon it that nothing will
make us change. Have courage, M. Bertrand; I hope that, with patience,
firmness, and consistency, all is not yet lost.[3]"
Nor was M. Bertrand the only one of the ministers who received proofs of
the resolution of the queen to adhere steadily to the Constitution. There
was also a new minister of war, the Count de Narbonne, as firmly attached
to the persons of the sovereigns as M. Bertrand himself, though in
political principle more inclined to the views of the Constitutionalists
than to those of the extreme Royalists. He was likewise a man of
considerable capacity, eloquent and fertile in resources; but he was
ambitious and somewhat vain; and he was so elated at the approval
expressed by the Assembly of a report on the military resources of the
kingdom which he laid before it soon after his appointment, that he
obtained an audience of the queen, the object of which was to convince her
that the only means of saving the State was to confer on a man of talent,
energy, sagacity, and activity, who enjoyed the confidence of the Assembly
and of the nation, the post of prime minister; and he admitted that he
intended to designate himself by this description. Marie Antoinette,
though fully aware of the desirableness of having a single man of ability
and firmness at the head of the administration, was for a moment surprised
out of her habitual courtesy. She could not forbear a smile, and in plain
terms asked him "if he were crazy.[4]" But she proceeded with her usual
kindness to explain to him the impracticability of the scheme which he had
suggested, and the foundation of her argument was an explanation that such
an appointment would be a violation of the Constitution, which forbade the
king to create any new ministerial office. And the count deserves to have
it mentioned to his honor that the rebuff which he had received in no
degree cooled his attachment to the king and queen, or the zeal with which
he labored for their service.
We have no information how far the new minister coincided in a step which
the queen took in the course of November, and which is commonly ascribed
to her judgment alone. Before its dissolution, the late Assembly had
broken up the National Guard of Paris into separate legions, and had
suppressed the appointment of commander-in-chief of the forces; and La
Fayette, whom this measure had left without employment, feeling keenly the
diminution of his importance, and instigated by the restlessness common to
men of moderate capacity, conceived the hope of succeeding Bailly in the
mayoralty of Paris, which that magistrate was on the point of resigning.
It had become a post of great consequence, since the extent to which the
authority of the crown had been pared away tended to make the mayor the
absolute dictator of the capital; and consequently the Jacobins were
anxious to secure the office for one of the extreme Revolutionary party,
and set up Petion as a rival candidate. The election belonged to the
citizens, and, as in the city the two parties possessed almost equal
strength, it was soon seen that the court, which had by no means lost its
influence among the tradesmen and shop-keepers, had the power of deciding
the contest in favor of the candidate for whom it should pronounce, Marie
Antoinette declared for Petion. She knew him to be a Jacobin,[5] but he
was so devoid of any reputation for ability that she did not fear him.
Nor, except that he had behaved with boorish disrespect and ill-manners
during their melancholy return from Varennes, had she any reason for
suspecting him of any special enmity to the king.
But La Fayette, though always loud in his professions of loyalty, had
never lost an opportunity of offering personal insults to both the king
and herself. It was to his shameful neglect (to put his conduct in the
most favorable light) that she justly attributed the danger to which she
had been exposed at Versailles, and the compulsion which had been put upon
the king to take up his residence in Paris; and, not to mention a constant
series of petty insults which he had heaped on both Louis and herself, and
on the Royalists as a body, he had given unmistakable proofs of his
personal animosity toward the king by his conduct on the 21st of June, and
by the indecent rigor with which he treated them both after their return
from Varennes. Even when he was loudest in the profession of his desire
and power to influence the Assembly in the king's favor, one of his own
friends had told him to his face that he was insincere,[6] and that Louis
could not and ought not to trust his promises; and every part of his
conduct toward the royal pair was stamped with duplicity as well as with
ill-will. It was not strange, therefore, indeed it was fully consistent
with the honest openness of Marie Antoinette's own character, that she
should prefer an open enemy to a pretended friend. She even believed what,
from the very commencement of the Revolution, many had suspected, that La
Fayette cherished views of personal ambition, and aimed at reviving the
old authority of a Maire du Palais over a Roi Faineant[7]. She therefore
directed her friends to throw their weight into the scale in favor of
Petion, who was accordingly elected by a great majority, while the
marquis, greatly chagrined, retired for a time to his estate in Auvergne.
The victory, however, was an unfortunate one for the court. It contributed
to increase the confidence of its enemies; and, as their instinct showed
them that it was from the resolution of the queen that they had the most
formidable opposition to dread, it was against her that, from their first
entrance into the Assembly, Vergniaud and his friends specially exerted
themselves; Vergniaud openly contending that the inviolability of the
sovereign, which was an article of the new Constitution, applied only to
the king himself, and in no degree to his consort; while in the Jacobin
and Cordelier Clubs the coarsest libels were poured forth against her with
unremitting perseverance to stimulate and justify the most obscene and
ferocious threats. The coarsest ruffians in a street quarrel never used
fouler language of one another than these men of education applied to the
pure-minded and magnanimous lady whose sole offense was that she was the
wife of their kind-hearted king.
And, in addition to this daily increase of their danger which such
denunciations could not fail to augment, the royal family were now
suffering inconveniences which even those whose measures had caused them
had never designed. They were in the most painful want of money. The
agitation of the last two years had rendered the treasury bankrupt. The
paper money, which now composed almost the whole circulation of the
country, was valueless. While, as it was in this paper money (assignats,
as the notes were called, as being professedly secured by assignments on
the royal domains and on the ecclesiastical property which had been
confiscated), that the king's civil list was paid, at the latter end of
each month it was not uncommon for him and the queen to be absolutely
destitute. It was with great reluctance that they accepted loans from
their loyal adherents, because they saw no prospect of being able to repay
them; but had they not availed themselves of this resource, they would at
times have wanted absolute necessaries.[8]
The royal couple still kept their health, the king's apathy being in this
respect as beneficial as the queen's courage: they still rode a great deal
when the weather was favorable; and on one occasion, at the beginning of
1792, the queen, with her sister-in-law and her daughter, went again to
the theatre. The opera was the same which had been performed at the visit
in October; but this time the Jacobins had not been forewarned so as to
pack the house, and Madame du Gazon's duet was received with enthusiasm.
Again, as she sung "Ah, que j'aime ma maitresse!" she bowed to the royal
box, and the audience cheered. As if in reply to one verse, "Il faut les
rendre heureux," "Oui, oui!" with lively unanimity, came from all parts of
the house, and the singers were compelled to repeat the duet four times.
"It is a queer nation this of ours," says the Princess Elizabeth, in
relating the scene to one of her correspondents, "but we must allow that
it has very charming moments.[9]"
A somewhat curious episode to divert their minds from these domestic
anxieties was presented by an embassy from the brave and intriguing Sultan
of Mysore, the celebrated Tippoo Sahib, who sought to engage Louis to lend
him six thousand French troops, with whose aid he trusted to break down
the ascendency which England was rapidly establishing in India. Tippoo
backed his request, in the Oriental fashion, by presents, though not such
as, in the opinion of M. Bertrand, were quite worthy of the giver or of
the receiver. To the king he sent some diamonds, but they were yellow,
ill-cut, and ill-set; and the rest of the offering was composed of a few
pieces of embroidered silk, striped cloth, and cambric: while the queen's
present consisted of nothing more valuable than a few bottles of perfume
of no very exquisite quality, and a few boxes of powdered scents, pastils,
and matches. The king and queen gave nearly the whole present to M.
Bertrand for his grandchildren, the queen only reserving a bottle of attar
of rose and a couple of pieces of cambric; and that chiefly to afford a
pretext for seeing M. Bertrand once or twice, without his reception being
imputed to a desire to promote some Austrian intrigue; for the Jacobins
had lately revived the clamor against Austrian influence with greater
vehemence than ever.
As M. Bertrand had grandchildren, he could well appreciate the pleasure of
the queen at an incident which closed one of his audiences. While he was
thus receiving her commands, the little dauphin, "beautiful as an angel,"
as the minister describes him, was capering about the room in high
delight, brandishing a wooden sword, a new toy which had just been given
him. An attendant called him to go to supper; and he bounded toward the
door. "How is this, my boy?" said Marie Antoinette, calling him back; "are
you going off without making M. Bertrand a bow?" "Oh, mamma," said the
little prince, still skipping about, and smiling, "that is because I know
well that M. Bertrand is one of our friends.... Good-evening, M.
Bertrand." "Is not he a nice child?[10]" said the queen, after he had left
the room. "He is very happy to be so young. He does not feel what we
suffer, and his gayety does us good." Alas! that which was now perhaps her
only pleasure--the contemplation of her child's opening grace and
amiability--before long became even an addition to her affliction, as the
probabilities increased that the madness of the people and the wickedness
of their leaders would deprive him of the inheritance, to preserve which
to him was the principal object of all her cares and exertions.
But these moments of gratification were becoming fewer as time went on.
Each month, each week brought fresh and increasing anxieties to engross
all her thoughts. As the Girondin leaders began to feel their strength,
the votes of the Assembly became more violent. One day it passed a fresh
decree against the priests, depriving all who refused to take the oath to
the new ecclesiastical constitution of the stipends for which their former
preferments had been commuted, placing them under strict supervision, and
declaring them liable to instant banishment if they should venture to
exercise their functions in private. Another day it vented its wrath upon
the emigrants, summoning the Count de Provence by name to return at once
to France; and, with respect to the rest of the body, now very numerous,
declaring their conduct in being assembled on the frontier of the kingdom
in a state of readiness for war in itself an act of treason; and
condemning to death and confiscation of their estates all who should fail
to return to their native land before a stated day.
But in these decrees the advocates of violence had for the moment gone too
far--they had outrun the feelings of the nation. The emigrants, indeed,
neither deserved nor found sympathy in any quarter. The main body of them
was at this time settled at Coblentz, where their conduct was such that it
is hard to say whether it were more offensive to their country, more
injurious to their king, or more discreditable to themselves. They could
not even act in harmony. The king's two brothers established rival courts,
with a mistress at the head of each. Madame de Balbi still ruled the Count
de Provence; Madame de Polastron was the presiding genius of the coterie
of the Count d'Artois. The two ladies, regarding each other with bitter
jealousy, agitated the whole town with their rivalries and wranglings, and
agreed in nothing but in their endeavors to excite some foreign sovereign
or other to make war upon their native land. It was in vain that Louis
himself first entreated them, and, when he found his entreaties were
disregarded, commanded his brothers to return. They positively refused
obedience to his order, telling him, in language which can only be
characterized as that of studied insult, that he was writing under
coercion; that his letter did not express his real views, and that "their
honor, their duty, even their affection for him, alike forbade them to
obey him.[11]" The queen could not command, but she wrote to them more
than one letter of most earnest entreaty, and, as the princes founded part
of their hopes on the co-operation of the Northern sovereigns, she wrote
also to the empress and to Gustavus, pressing both, and especially the
King of Sweden,[12] to restrain them; but they were too headstrong and
full of their own projects to listen to her entreaties any more than to
the king's commands, and did not even take the trouble to conceal their
negotiations with foreign powers, nor their object, which could be nothing
but war.
It was impossible that such conduct steadily pursued by the king's own
brothers could be any thing but most pernicious to his cause. It could not
fail to excite suspicions of his own good faith. It supplied the Jacobins
with pretexts for putting fresh restraints on his authority; and it
frightened even the Constitutionalists, since it was plain that civil war
must ensue, with, very probably, the addition of foreign war also, if
these machinations of the emigrants were not suppressed.
Still, these sweeping proscriptions of entire classes were not yet to the
taste of the nation. Petitions from the country, and even one from the
department of the Seine, were presented to Louis, begging him to refuse
his assent to the decree against the priests; and the feeling which they
represented was so strong, and the reputation of some of the petitioners
stood so high for ability and influence, that the ministers believed that
he could safely refuse his sanction to both the votes. Even without their
advice he would have rejected the decree against the priests, as one
absolutely incompatible with his reverence for religion and its ministers;
and his conduct on this subject supplies one more striking parallel to the
history of the great English rebellion; since there can hardly be a more
precise resemblance between events occurring in different ages and
different countries than is afforded by the resistance made by Charles to
the last vote of the London Parliament against the bishops, and this
resistance of Louis to the will of the Assembly on behalf of the priests,
and by the fatal effect which, in each case, their conscientious and
courageous determination had upon the fortunes of the two sovereigns.
Louis therefore put his veto on both the decrees, with the exception of
that clause in the act against the emigrants which summoned his brothers
to return to the kingdom. But, that no one might pretend to fancy that he
either approved of the conduct of the emigrants or sympathized with their
principles or designs, he issued a circular letter to the governors of the
different sea-ports, in which he remonstrated most earnestly with the
sailors, numbers of whom, as it was reported in Paris, were preparing to
follow their example. He pointed out in it that those who thus deserted
their country mistook their duty to that country, to him as their king,
and to themselves; that the present aspect of the nation, desirous to
return to order and to submission to the law, removed every pretext for
such conduct. He set before them his own example, and bid them remain at
their posts, as he was remaining at his; and, in language more impressive
than that of command, he exhorted them not to turn a deaf ear to his
prayers; and at the same time he addressed letters to the electors of
Treves and Mayence, and to the other petty German princes whose
territories, bordering on the Rhine, were the principal resort of the
emigrants, requiring them to cease to give them shelter, and announcing
that if they should refuse to remove them from their dominions he should
consider their refusal a sufficient ground for war; while, to show that he
did not intend this menace to be a dead letter, he soon afterward
announced to the Assembly that he had ordered a powerful army of a hundred
and fifty thousand men to be moved toward the frontier, under the command
of Marshal Luckner, Marshal Rochambeau, and General La Fayette, and he
invited the members to vote a levy of fifty thousand more men to raise the
force of the nation to its full complement.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Death of Leopold.--Murder of Gustavus of Sweden.--Violence of Vergniaud.
--The Ministers resign.--A Girondin Ministry is appointed.--Character of
Dumouriez.--Origin of the Name Sans-culottes.--Union of Different Parties
against the Queen.--War is declared against the Empire.--Operations in the
Netherlands.--Unskillfulness of La Fayette.--The King falls into a State
of Torpor.--Fresh Libels on the Queen.--Barnave's Advice.--Dumouriez has
an Audience of the Queen.--Dissolution of the Constitutional Guard.--
formation of a Camp near Paris.--Louis adheres to his Refusal to assent to
the Decree against the Priests.--Dumouriez resigns his Office, and takes
command of the Army.
War of some kind--foreign war, civil war, or both combined--had
apparently become inevitable; and Marie Antoinette deceived herself if she
thought that the armed congress of sovereigns, for which she was above all
things anxious, could lead to any other result. In any ease, a congress
must have produced one consequence which she deprecated as much as any
other, a waste of time, while, as she truly said, her enemies never wasted
a moment. Nor, with the very different views of the policy to be pursued,
which the emperor and the King of Prussia entertained (Frederick being an
advocate of an armed intervention in the affairs of France, which Leopold
opposed as impracticable, and, if practicable, impolitic), was it easy to
see how a congress could have brought those monarchs to agree on any
united system of action. But all projects of that kind necessarily fell to
the ground in consequence of the death of the emperor, which took place,
after a very short illness, on the 1st of March, 1792; and before the end
of the same month the royal family lost another warm friend in Gustavus of
Sweden, who was assassinated in the very midst of preparations which he
confidently hoped might contribute to deliver his brother sovereign from
his troubles.
Marie Antoinette spoke truly when she said that the enemies of the crown
never lost time. The very prospect of war increased the divisions of the
Assembly, since the Jacobins were undisguisedly averse to it. Not one of
their body had any reputation for skill in arms, so that in the event of
war it was evident that the chief commands, both in army and navy, must be
conferred on persons unconnected with them; while the Girondins, though,
as far as was yet known, equally destitute of members possessed of any
military ability, looked on war as favorable to their designs, whatever
might be the issue of a campaign. They were above all things eager for the
destruction of the monarchy, and they reckoned that if the French army
were victorious, its success would disable those who were most willing and
might be most able to support the throne; while, if the enemy should
prevail, it would be easy to represent their triumph as the fruit of the
mismanagement, if not of the treachery, of the king's generals and
ministers; and the opposition of these two parties was at this time so
notorious that the queen thought it favorable to the king, since each
would be eager to preserve him as a possible ally against its adversaries.
It is for her husband's and her child's safety that she expresses anxiety,
never for her own. With respect to herself her uniform language is that of
fearlessness. She does not for a moment conceal from her correspondents
her sense of the dangers which surround her. She has not only open
hostility to fear, but treachery, which is far worse; and she declares
that "a perpetual imprisonment in a solitary tower on the sea-shore would
be a less cruel fate than that which she daily endures from the wickedness
of her enemies and the weakness of her friends. Every thing menaces an
inevitable catastrophe; but she is prepared for every thing. She has
learned from her mother not to fear death. That may as well come to-day as
to-morrow. She only fears for her dear children, and for those she loves;
and high among those whom she loves she places her sister-in-law
Elizabeth, who is always an angel aiding her to support her sorrows, and
who, with her poor, dear children, never quits her.[1]"
A long continuance of sorrows and fears, such as had now for nearly three
years pressed upon the writer of this letter, would so wear away and break
down ordinary souls that, when a crisis came, they would be found wholly
unequal to grapple with it; and we may therefore the better form some idea
of the strength of mind and almost superhuman fortitude of this admirable
queen, if, from time to time, we fix our attention on these not
exaggerated complaints, for indeed the misfortunes that elicited them
admit of no exaggeration; and then remember that, after so long a period
of such uninterrupted suffering, her spirit was so far from being broken,
that, as increasing dangers and horrors thickened around her, her courage
seemed to increase also. Her faithful attendant, Madame de Campan, has
remarked that her troubles had not even affected her temper; that no one
ever saw her out of humor. In every respect, to the very last, she showed
herself superior to the utmost malice of her enemies.
The news of the death of Leopold, whose son and successor, Francis, was
but three-and-twenty years of age, gave fresh encouragement to his
sister's enemies. The intelligence had hardly reached Paris when Vergniaud
began to prepare the way for a fresh assault on the crown by a
denunciation of the ministers, while the Jacobins and Cordeliers made an
open attack upon another club which the Constitutionalists had lately
formed under the name of Les Feuillants, holding its meetings in a convent
of the Monks of St. Bernard,[2] and closed it by main force. Though
several soldiers, and La Fayette among them, were members of the
Feuillants, they made no resistance; they only applied to Petion, as mayor
of the city, for protection; and that worthy magistrate refused them aid,
telling them that though the law forbade them to be attacked, the voice of
the people was against them, and to that voice he was bound to listen.
The ministers fell before Vergniaud, and the unhappy king had no resource
but to choose their successors from the party which had triumphed over
them. The absurd law by which the last Assembly had excluded its members
from office was still in force, so that the orator himself and his
colleagues could obtain no personal promotion; but they were able to
nominate the new ministers, who, with but one exception, were all men
equally devoid of ability and reputation, and therefore were the better
fitted to be the tools of those to whom they owed their preferment. The
names of three were Lacoste, Degraves, and Duranton, of whom nothing
beyond their names is known. A fourth was Roland, who was indeed known,
though not for any abilities of his own, but as the husband of the woman
who, as has been already mentioned, was the first person in the whole
nation to raise the cry for the murder of the king and queen, and whose
fierce thirst for blood so predominated over every other feeling that a
few weeks afterward she even began to urge the assassination of the only
one among her husband's colleagues who was possessed of the slightest
ability because his views did not altogether coincide with her own.