An affecting scene
The royal group
The appeal touched the heart of the grocer and the captors by whom the king was surrounded. Tears came into the eyes of many, they hesitated; the expression of their countenances showed that they would willingly, if they dared to consult the dictates of their own hearts, let the king pass on. A more affecting scene can hardly be imagined. It was midnight. Torches and flambeaux were gleaming around. Men, women, and children were hurrying to and fro in the darkness. The alarm bell was pealing out its hurried sounds through the still air. A crowd of half-dressed peasants and artisans was rapidly accumulating about the inn. The king stood pleading with his subjects for liberty and life, far more moved by compassion for his wife and children than for himself. The children, weary and terrified, and roused suddenly from the sleep in which they had been lost in their parents' arms, gazed upon the strange scene with undefined dread, unconscious of the magnitude of their peril. The queen, seated upon a bale of goods in the shop, with her two children clinging to her side, plead, at times with the tears of despair, and again with all the majesty of her queenly nature, for pity or for justice. She hoped that a woman's heart throbbed beneath the bosom of the wife of the mayor, and made an appeal to her which one would think that, under the circumstances, no human heart could have resisted.
Appeal of the queen
"You are a mother, madame," said the queen, in most imploring accents, "you are a wife! the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands. Think what I must suffer for these children – for my husband. At one word from you I shall owe them to you. The Queen of France will owe you more than her kingdom – more than life."
"Madame," coldly replied the selfish and calculating woman, "I should be happy to help you if I could without danger. You are thinking of your husband, I am thinking of mine. It is a wife's first duty to think of her own husband."
Telegraphic dispatch to Paris
Intense agony of the queen
The queen saw that all appeals to such a spirit must be in vain, and, taking her two children by the hand, with Madame Elizabeth ascended the stairs which conducted from the grocer's shop to his rooms above, where she was shielded from the gaze of the crowd. She threw herself into a chair, and, overwhelmed with anguish, burst into a flood of tears. The alarm bell continued to ring; telegraphic dispatches were sent to Paris, communicating tidings of the arrest; the neighboring villagers flocked into town; the National Guard, composed of people opposed to the king, were rapidly assembled from all quarters, and the streets barricaded to prevent the possibility of any rescue by the soldiers who advocated the royal cause. Thus the dreadful hours lingered away till the morning dawned. The increasing crowd stimulated one another to ferocity and barbarity. Insults, oaths, and imprecations incessantly fell upon the ears of the captives. The queen probably endured as much of mental agony that night as the human mind is capable of enduring. The conflict of indignation, terror, and despair was so dreadful, that her hair, which the night previous had been auburn, was in the morning white as snow. This extraordinary fact is well attested, and indicates an enormity of woe almost incomprehensible.
Consternation in Paris
The palace forced
Insults to the royal family
Measures to arrest the king
The tumult subsides
There was no knowledge in Paris of the king's departure until seven o'clock in the morning, when the servants of the palace entered the apartments of the king and queen, and found the beds undisturbed and the rooms deserted. The alarm spread like wildfire through the palace and through the city. The alarm bells were rung, cannon were fired, and the cry resounded through the streets, "The king has fled! the king has fled!" The terrified populace were expecting almost at the next moment to see him return with an avenging army to visit his rebellious subjects with the most terrible retribution. From all parts of the city, every lane, and street, and alley leading to the Tuileries was thronged with the crowd, pouring on, like an inundation, toward the deserted palace. The doors were forced open, and the interior of the palace was instantly filled with the swarming multitudes. The mob from the streets polluted the sanctuaries of royalty with every species of vulgarity and obscenity. An amazon market-woman took possession of the queen's bed, and, spreading her cherries upon it, she took her seat upon the royal couch, exclaiming, "To-day it is the nation's turn to take their ease." One of the caps of the queen was placed in derision upon the head of a vile girl of the street. She exclaimed that it would sully her forehead, and trampled it under her feet with contempt. Every conceivable insult was heaped upon the royal family. Placards, posted upon the walls, offered trivial rewards to any one who would bring back the noxious animals which had fled from the palace. The metropolis was agitated to its very center, and the most vigorous measures immediately adopted to arrest the king, if possible, before he should reach the friends who could afford him protection. This turmoil continued for many hours, till the cry passed from mouth to mouth, and filled the streets, "He is arrested! he is arrested!"
Chapter VIII.
The Return to Paris
1791-1792
Despair of the king
Lovely character of Madame Elizabeth
During all the long hours of the night, while the king was detained in the grocer's shop at Varennes, he was, with anxiety indescribable, looking every moment for soldiers to appear, sent by M. Bouillé for his rescue. But the National Guard, which was composed of those who were in favor of the Revolution, were soon assembled in such numbers as to render all idea of rescue hopeless. The sun rose upon Varennes but to show the king the utter desperation of his condition, and he resigned himself to despair. The streets were filled with an infuriated populace, and from every direction the people were flocking toward the focus of excitement. The children of the royal family, utterly exhausted, had fallen asleep. Madame Elizabeth, one of the most lovely and gentle of earthly beings, the sister of the king, who, through all these trials, and, indeed, through her whole life, manifested peculiarly the spirit of heaven, was, regardless of herself, earnestly praying for support for her brother and sister.
Return to Paris
Insults of the mob
Massacre of M. Dampierre
Preparations were immediately made to forward the captives to Paris, lest the troops of M. Bouillé, informed of their arrest, should come to their rescue. The king did every thing in his power to delay the departure, and one of the women of the queen feigned sudden and alarming illness at the moment all of the rest had been pressed into the carriages. But the impatience of the populace could not thus be restrained. With shouts and threats they compelled all into the carriages, and the melancholy procession, escorted by three or four thousand of the National Guard, and followed by a numerous and ever-increasing concourse of the people, moved slowly toward Paris. Hour after hour dragged heavily along as the fugitives, drinking the very dregs of humiliation, were borne by their triumphant and exasperated foes back to the horrors from which they had fled. The road was lined on either side by countless thousands, insulting the agonized victims with derision, menaces, and the most ferocious gestures. Varennes is distant from Paris one hundred and eighty miles, and for this whole distance, by night and by day, with hardly an hour's delay for food or repose, the royal family were exposed to the keenest torture of which the spiritual nature is in this world susceptible. Every revolution of the wheels but brought them into contact with fresh vociferations of calumny. The fury of the populace was so great that it was with difficulty that the guard could protect their captives from the most merciless massacre. Again and again there was a rush made at the carriages, and the mob was beaten back by the arms of the soldiers. One old gentleman, M. Dampierre, ever accustomed to venerate royalty, stood by the road side, affected by the profoundest grief in view of the melancholy spectacle. Uncovering his gray hairs, he bowed respectfully to his royal master, and ventured to give utterance to accents of sympathy. The infuriated populace fell upon him like tigers, and tore him to pieces before the eyes of the king and queen. The wheels of the royal carriage came very near running over his bleeding corpse.
Commissioners from Paris
Noble character of Barnave
Brutality of Pétion
The procession was at length met by commissioners sent from the Assembly to take charge of the king. Ashamed of the brutality of the people, Barnave and Pétion, the two commissioners, entered the royal carriage to share the danger of its inmates. They shielded the prisoners from death, but they could not shield them from insult and outrage. An ecclesiastic, venerable in person and in character, approached the carriages as they moved sadly along, and exhibited upon his features some traces of respect and sorrow for fallen royalty. It was a mortal offense. The brutal multitude would not endure a look even of sympathy for the descendant of a hundred kings. They rushed upon the defenseless clergyman, and would have killed him instantly had not Barnave most energetically interfered. "Frenchmen!" he shouted, from the carriage windows, "will you, a nation of brave men, become a people of murderers!" Barnave was a young man of much nobleness of character. His polished manners, and his sympathy for the wrecked and ruined family of the king, quite won their gratitude. Pétion, on the contrary, was coarse and brutal. He was a Democrat in the worst sense of that abused word. He affected rude and rough familiarity with the royal family, lounged contemptuously upon the cushions, ate apples and melons, and threw the rind out of the window, careless whether or not he hit the king in the face. In all his remarks, he seemed to take a ferocious pleasure in wounding the feelings of his victims.
Approach to Paris
Appalling violence
Sufferings of the royal family
As the cavalcade drew near to Paris, the crowds surrounding the carriages became still more dense, and the fury of the populace more unmeasured. The leaders of the National Assembly were very desirous of protecting the royal family from the rage of the mob, and to shield the nation from the disgrace of murdering the king, the queen, and their children in the streets. It was feared that, when the prisoners should enter the thronged city, where the mob had so long held undisputed sway, it would be impossible to restrain the passions of the multitude, and that the pavements would be defaced with the blood of the victims. Placards were pasted upon the walls in every part of the city, "Whoever applauds the king shall be beaten; whoever insults him shall be hung." As the carriages approached the suburbs of the metropolis, the multitudes which thronged them became still more numerous and tumultuous, and the exhibitions of violence more appalling. All the dens of infamy in the city vomited their denizens to meet and deride, and, if possible, to destroy the captured monarch. It was a day of intense and suffocating heat. Ten persons were crowded into the royal carriage. Not a breath of air fanned the fevered cheeks of the sufferers. The heat, reflected from the pavements and the bayonets, was almost insupportable. Clouds of dust enveloped them, and the sufferings of the children were so great that the queen was actually apprehensive that they would die. The queen dropped the window of the carriage, and, in a voice of agony, implored some one to give her a cup of water for her fainting child. "See, gentlemen," she exclaimed, "in what a condition my poor children are! one of them is choking." "We will yet choke them and you," was the brutal reply, "in another fashion." Several times the mob broke through the line which guarded the carriages, pushed aside the horses, and, mounting the steps, stretched their clenched fists in at the windows. The procession moved perseveringly along in the midst of the clashing of sabers, the clamor of the blood-thirsty multitude, and the cries of men trampled under the hoofs of the horses.
Arrival at the Tuileries
Exertions of La Fayette
Roar of the multitude
It was the 25th of June, 1791, at seven o'clock in the evening, when this dreadful procession, passing through the Barrier de l'Étoile, entered the city, and traversed the streets, through double files of soldiers, to the Tuileries. At length they arrived, half dead with exhaustion and despair, at the palace. The crowd was so immense that it was with the utmost difficulty that an entrance could be effected. At that moment, La Fayette, who had been adopting the most vigorous measures for the protection of the persons of the royal family, came to meet them. The moment Maria Antoinette saw him, forgetful of her own danger, and trembling for the body-guard who had periled their lives for her family, she exclaimed, "Monsieur La Fayette, save the body-guard." The king and queen alighted from the carriage. Some of the soldiers took the children, and carried them through the crowd into the palace. A member of the Assembly, who had been inimical to the King, came forward, and offered his arm to the queen for her protection. She looked him a moment in the face, and indignantly rejected the proffered aid of an enemy. Then, seeing a deputy who had been their friend, she eagerly accepted his arm, and ascended the steps of the palace. A prolonged roar, as of thunder, ascended from the multitudinous throng which surrounded the palace when the king and queen had entered, and the doors of their prison were again closed against them.
Spirit of the queen
La Fayette was at the head of the National Guard. He was a strong advocate for the rights of the people. At the same time, he wished to respect the rights of the king, and to sustain a constitutional monarchy. As soon as they had entered the palace, Maria Antoinette, with that indomitable spirit which ever characterized her, approached La Fayette, and offered to him the keys of her casket, as if he were her jailer. La Fayette, deeply wounded, refused to receive them. The queen indignantly, with her own hands, placed them in his hat. "Your majesty will have the goodness to take them back," said the marquis, "for I certainly shall not touch them."
Embarrassing position of La Fayette
The position of La Fayette at this time was about as embarrassing as it could possibly have been; and he was virtually the jailer of the royal family, answerable with his life for their safe keeping. He had always been a firm friend of civil and religious liberty. He was very anxious to see France blessed with those free institutions and that recognition of popular rights which are the glory of America, but he also wished to protect the king and queen from outrage and insult; and a storm of popular fury had now risen which he knew not how to control or to guide. He, however, resolved to do all in his power to protect the royal family, and to watch the progress of events with the hope of establishing constitutional liberty and a constitutional throne over France.
The palace rigorously guarded
The queen grossly insulted
Despair of the king
The palace was now guarded, by command of the Assembly, with a degree of rigor unknown before. The iron gates of the courts and garden of the Tuileries were kept locked. A list of the persons who were to be permitted to see the royal family was made out, and none others were allowed to enter. At every door sentinels were placed, and in every passage, and in the corridor which connected the chambers of the king and queen, armed men were stationed. The doors of the sleeping apartments of the king and queen were kept open night and day, and a guard was placed there to keep his eye ever upon the victims. No respect was paid to female modesty, and the queen was compelled to retire to her bed under the watchful eye of an unfeeling soldier. It seems impossible that a civilized people could have been guilty of such barbarism. But all sentiments of humanity appear to have fled from France. One of the queen's women, at night, would draw her own bed between that of the queen and the open door, that she might thus partially shield the person of her royal mistress. The king was so utterly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the calamities in which he was now involved, that his mind, for a season, seemed to be prostrated and paralyzed by the blow. For ten days he did not exchange a single word with any member of his family, but moved sadly about in the apathy of despair, or sat in moody silence. At last the queen threw herself upon her knees before him, and, presenting to him her children, besought him, for her sake and that of their little ones, to rouse his fortitude. "We may all perish," she said, "but let us, at least, perish like sovereigns, and not wait to be strangled unresistingly upon the very floor of our apartments."
Supremacy of the mob
A brutal assemblage
Ferocious inscriptions
Attack upon the palace
The mob force an entrance
Fearlessness of the king
The mob awed
Courage of Madame Elizabeth
Cries of the mob
The long and dreary months of the autumn, the winter, and the spring thus passed away, with occasional gleams of hope visiting their minds, but with the storm of revolution, on the whole, growing continually more black and terrific. General anarchy rioted throughout France. Murders were daily committed with impunity. There was no law. The mob had all power in their hands. Neither the king nor queen could make their appearance any where without exposure to insult. Violent harangues in the Assembly and in the streets had at length roused the populace to a new act of outrage. The immediate cause was the refusal of the king to give his sanction to a bill for the persecution of the priests. It was the 20th of June, 1792. A tumultuous assemblage of all the miserable, degraded, and vicious, who thronged the garrets and the cellars of Paris, and who had been gathered from all lands by the lawlessness with which crime could riot in the capital, were seen converging, as by a common instinct, toward the palace. They bore banners fearfully expressive of their ferocity, and filled the air with the most savage outcries. Upon the end of a pike there was affixed a bleeding heart, with the inscription, "The heart of the aristocracy." Another bore a doll, suspended to a frame by the neck, with this inscription, "To the gibbet with the Austrian." With the ferocity of wolves, they surrounded the palace in a mass impenetrable. The king and queen, as they looked from their windows upon the multitudinous gathering, swaying to and fro like the billows of the ocean in a storm, and with the clamor of human passions, more awful than the voice of many waters, rending the skies, instinctively clung to one another and to their children in their powerlessness. Madame Elizabeth, with her saint-like spirit, and her heaven-directed thoughts, was ever unmindful of her own personal danger in her devotion to her beloved brother. The king hoped that the soldiers who were stationed as a guard within the inclosures of the palace would be able to protect them from violence. The gates leading to the Place du Carrousel were soon shattered beneath the blows of axes, and the human torrent poured in with the resistlessness of a flood. The soldiers very deliberately shook the priming from their guns, as the emphatic expression to the mob that they had nothing to fear from them, and the artillery men coolly directed their pieces against the palace. Axes and iron bars were immediately leveled at the doors, and they flew from their hinges; and the drunken and infuriated rabble, with clubs, and pistols, and daggers, poured, an interminable throng, through the halls and apartments where kings, for ages, had reigned in inapproachable pomp and power. The servants of the king, in terror, fled in every direction. Still the crowd came rushing and roaring on, crashing the doors before them, till they approached the apartment in which the royal family was secluded. The king, who, though deficient in active energy, possessed passive fearlessness in the most eminent degree, left his wife, children, and sister clinging together, and entered the adjoining room to meet his assailants. Just as he entered the room, the door, which was bolted, fell with a crash, and the mob was before him. For a moment the wretches were held at bay by the calm dignity of the monarch, as, without the tremor of a nerve, he gazed steadily upon them. The crowd in the rear pressed on upon those in the advance, and three friends of the king had just time to interpose themselves between him and the mob, when the whole dense throng rushed in and filled the room. A drunken assassin, with a sharp iron affixed to a long pole, aimed a thrust violently at the king's heart. One blow from an heroic citizen laid him prostrate on the floor, and he was trampled under the feet of the throng. Oaths and imprecations filled the room; knives and sabers gleamed, and yet the majesty of royalty, for a few brief moments, repelled the ferocity of the assassins. A few officers of the National Guard, roused by the peril of the king, succeeded in reaching him, and, crowding him into the embrasure of a window, placed themselves as a shield before him. The king seemed only anxious to withdraw the attention of the mob from the room in which his family were clustered, where he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, with extended arms and imploring looks, struggling to come and share his fate. "It is the queen!" was the cry, and a score of weapons were turned toward her. "No! no!" exclaimed others, "it is Madame Elizabeth." Her gentle spirit, even in these degraded hearts, had won admiration, and not a blow fell upon her. "Ah!" exclaimed Madame Elizabeth, "why do you undeceive them? Gladly would I die in her place, if I might thus save the queen." By the surging of the crowd she was swept into the embrasure of another window, where she was hemmed in without any possibility of extrication. By this time the crowds were like locusts, climbing up the balconies, and pouring in at the windows, and every foot of ground around the palace was filled with the excited throng. Shouts of derision filled the air, while the mob without were incessantly crying, "Have you killed them yet? Throw us out their heads."
The red bonnet
Almost miraculously, the friends surrounding the king succeeded in warding off the blows which were aimed at him. One of the mob thrust out to the king, upon the end of a pike, a red bonnet, the badge of the Jacobins, and there was a general shout, "Let him put it on! let him put it on! It is a sign of patriotism. If he is a patriot he will wear it." The king, smiling, took the bonnet and put it upon his head. Instantly there rose a shout from the fickle multitude, "Vive le roi!" The mob had achieved its victory, and placed the badge of its power upon the brow of the humbled monarch.
First glimpse of Napoleon
There was at that time standing in the court-yard of the palace a young man, with the blood boiling with indignation in his veins, in view of the atrocities of the mob. The ignominious spectacle of the red bonnet upon the head of the king, as he stood in the recess of the window, seemed more than this young man could endure, and, turning upon his heel, he hastened away, exclaiming, "The wretches! the wretches! they ought to be mown down by grape-shot." This is the first glimpse the Revolution presents of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The queen's apartments invaded
Insulted by abandoned women
The queen's children
The young girl
But while the king was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be infamous as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing all in her power to induce foreign armies to invade the French empire with fire and sword; and that she had instigated the king to attempt escape, that he might head the armies. Maria, conscious of this hatred, was aware that her presence would only augment the tide of indignation swelling against the king, and she therefore remained in the bed-chamber with her children. But her sanctuary was instantly invaded. The door of her apartment had been, by some friend, closed and bolted. Its stout oaken panels were soon dashed in, and the door driven from its hinges. A crowd of miserable women, abandoned to the lowest depths of degradation and vulgarity, rushed into the apartment, assailing her ears with the most obscene and loathsome epithets the language could afford. The queen stood in the recess of a window, with queenly pride curbing her mortal apprehension. A few friends had gathered around her, and placed a table before her as a partial protection. Her daughter, an exceedingly beautiful girl of fourteen years of age, with her light brown hair floating in ringlets over her fair brow and shoulders, clung to her mother's bosom as if she thought not of herself, but would only, with her own body, shield her mother's heart from the dagger of the assassin. Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender hearted would speak a word of sympathy. A young girl came crowded along, neatly dressed, and with a pleasing countenance. She, however, immediately began to revile the queen in the coarsest language of vituperation.
"Why do you hate me so, my friend?" said the queen, kindly; "have I ever done any thing to injure or to offend you?"
"No! you have never injured me," was the reply, "but it is you who cause the misery of the nation."
"Poor child!" rejoined the queen, "you have been told so, and have been deceived. Why should I make the people miserable? I am the wife of the king – the mother of the dauphin; and by all the feelings of my heart, as a wife and mother, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall never see my own country again. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you loved me."
The heart of the girl was touched. She burst into tears, and exclaimed, "Pardon me, good queen, I did not know you; but now I see that I have indeed been deceived, and you are truly good."
Meeting of the National Assembly
The king's friends derided
Hour after hour of humiliation and agony thus rolled away. The National Assembly met, and in vain the friends of the king urged its action to rescue the royal family from the insults and perils to which they were exposed. But these efforts were met by the majority only with derision. They hoped that the terrors of the mob would compel the king hereafter to give his assent to any law whatever which they might frame. At last the shades of night began to add their gloom to this awful scene, and even the most bitter enemies of the king did not think it safe to leave forty thousand men, inflamed with intoxication and rage, to riot, through the hours of the night, in the parlors, halls, and chambers of the Tuileries. The president of the Assembly, at that late hour, crowded his way into the apartment where, for several hours, the king had been exposed to every conceivable indignity. The mysterious authority of law opened the way through the throng.
"I have only just learned," said the president, "the situation of your majesty."
"That is very astonishing," replied the king, indignantly, "for it is a long time that it has lasted."
The president of the Assembly
The mob retires
The president, mounted upon the shoulders of four grenadiers, addressed the mob and urged them to retire, and they, weary with the long hours of outrages, slowly sauntered through the halls and apartments of the palace, and at eight o'clock silence reigned, with the gloom of night, throughout the Tuileries. The moment the mob became perceptibly less, the king received his sister into his arms, and they hastened to the apartment of the queen. During all the horrors of this awful day, her heroic soul had never quailed; but, now that the peril was over, she threw herself upon the bosom of her husband, and wept in all the bitterness of inconsolable grief. As the family were locked in each other's arms in silent gratitude for their preservation, the king accidentally beheld in a mirror the red bonnet, which he had forgotten to remove from his head. He turned red with mortification, and, casting upon the floor the badge of his degradation, turned to the queen, with his eyes filled with tears, and exclaimed, "Ah, madame, why did I take you from your country, to associate you with the ignominy of such a day as this!"
Deputies visit the royal family
After the withdrawal of the mob, several of the deputies of the National Assembly were in the apartment with the royal family, and, as the queen recounted the horrors of the last five hours, one of them, though bitterly hostile to the royal family, could not refrain from tears. "You weep," said she to him, "at seeing the king and his family so cruelly treated by a people whom he always wished to make happy."
Unfeeling remark
"True, madame," unfeelingly replied the deputy, "I weep for the misfortunes of a beautiful and sensitive woman, the mother of a family. But do not mistake; not one of my tears falls for either king or queen. I hate kings and queens. It is the only feeling they inspire me with. It is my religion."