To the scaffold (34 page)

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N the day following the assault on the Bastille, Ar-tois ordered his servants to prepare for a hurried departure from the country. He intended to leave that very night, taking his children and his mistress and leaving behind all but the most portable of his valuables. He did not intend to wait for more violence to break out in Paris, and he knew that he could not trust his foolish brother the King to see reason at last and instruct the army to fire on the rebels in the capital. Emigration offered the only hope—perhaps the only hope for the future of the Bourbon line. He said his good-byes, waited for nightfall, and left.

Others followed Artois's lead. The Prince de Conde, the Due and Duchesse de Polignac and their children, the Abb^ Vermond, these and dozens of others, including many who had been Antoinette's closest associates and friends, made swift and sudden departures for less troubled realms. Those who did not leave were preparing to leave, mentally and physically. Terrifying reports reaching the court from Paris spoke of armies of rioters, fifty thousand strong, ready to march on Versailles with muskets and cannon. The courtyards of the palace were full of people, shouting criticisms of the Queen, threatening to pull down the throne, demanding that the royals show themselves on the balcony, with their children.

Madame Campan mingled with the crowd. "I heard a thousand vociferations," she wrote. "A woman, whose face was covered by a black lace veil, seized me by the arm with some degree

of violence, and said, calling me by my name, *I know you very well; tell your Queen not to meddle with government any longer; let her leave her husband and our good Estates-General to work out the happiness of the people.'"

Another demonstrator seized the bedchamber woman by the other arm and said, "*Yes, yes; tell her over and over again that it will not be with these Estates as with the others, which produced no good to the people. . . . There will not now be seen a deputy of the Third Estate making a speech with one knee on the ground; tell her this, do you hear?'"

When Antoinette came out on the balcony in response to the crowd's demands, Madame Campan was very much afraid for her. The voices grew more shrill and menacing. Where was the infamous Duchesse de Polignac, people wanted to know. She had to be somewhere near the Queen, "working underground, molelike." But, they added, "we shall know how to dig her out!"*

It was as much the tone of these remarks as their meaning that alarmed the Queen's confidante. The threats were murderous, the criticisms edged with a thirst for vengeance. Even though the King, earlier that day, had gone to the meeting hall of the National Assembly (which many in the crowd, it seems, still referred to by its former name) and announced that he had removed all possible provocation to the rioters in Paris by withdrawing the troops from the vicinity of the city, they were far from content. Pulling back the soldiers was only a beginning, all the labor of reform still lay ahead—and meanwhile the price of bread was reaching new heights. As for the deputies to the National Assembly, many were frightened by the growing autonomy of the Parisians, even as they suspected the motives and feared the supposed secret maneuvers of the King. He seemed benevolent, but those who were known to dominate him—chiefly the Queen—were not. And if the dreaded army of rioters did come in their thousands to Versailles, who was there to stop them?

In Paris, the governing committee appointed Bailly Mayor of the city with the veteran of the American war, the Marquis de Lafayette, as commander of the garde bourgeoise (which was soon renamed the National Guard). Would Lafayette's men protect the monarchy, and the persons and property of the deputies, in the event of more violence? No one could say with certainty.

On the sixteenth of July, the King, the Queen and the minis-

ters gathered in Louis's apartments to make a crucial decision. Should the rest of the royal family follow Artois into exile, or should they stay at Versailles, with all the risks that that entailed? Delegations from Paris had been arriving to see the King for the past several days, asking him to come to the city to reassure the people and to do what he could to restore calm. If he elected to stay, he would have to face the volatile Parisians, at the risk of his life. Yet if he left, he would look weak and cowardly, and he might never be able to return.

The arguments went back and forth, the various possibilities were debated. If the King decided on flight, he could take refuge in Metz, the venerable fortress town some two hundred miles to the east of Paris. Yet getting there would be difficult, as many provincial towns were in revolt in imitation of Paris and the countryside too was beginning to erupt in violence. And if the royal family reached Metz, what then? Louis had no money, no provisions, only the valuables he could carry. Antoinette, who argued strongly for the flight to Metz, insisted that Louis could rebuild his eroding authority quickly, by rallying the army to reconquer the kingdom on his behalf. Yet she knew how passive he could be, he was not the man to lead an army or inspire a counter-rebellion. ^

"Well, gentlemen," the King said at length to his councillors, "we must decide; am I to go or to stay? I am ready to do either." The ministers were against the risks inherent in flight, Provence and the Mar^chal de Broglie, War Minister, urged Louis to stay. He deferred to the judgment of the majority.^

Antoinette was displeased. There was no doubt in her mind that her husband was doing the wrong thing. All the clearsighted members of the family, all the sensible courtiers were leaving. Half the rabble of Paris might at any moment descend on Versailles, ransack the palace, kill her and Louis and their children. It was madness to stay and let this happen. She prepared to leave, gathering her jewels in a single box small enough to carry and burning many of her official papers lest they fall into the wrong hands.

She was still grieving the loss of her son, now she grieved the loss of her friends and intimates, whose departures she watched in sorrow. She sorely missed Yolande de Polignac, who made her escape from Versailles dressed as a chambermaid and sitting, as

servants usually did, on the outside of her coach. Yolande had been, earlier in h^r life, Antoinette's closest friend, and even though a rift had developed between them in recent years the Queen felt bereft when Yolande departed. The petty intrigues that had divided them were in any case dwarfed by the momentous events of the past weeks, and by the imminent danger felt by nearly everyone at the palace.

The danger was acute. On the same day that the question of flight was discussed in the King's apartments Antoinette received a special courier in secret. He was an old man, over seventy, a wealthy Frenchman living in Brussels sent posthaste to Antoinette to deliver a letter from her sister Christina. Christina had written four pages to Antoinette, but because the aged courier was warned that his life would be at risk if he were to be discovered carrying a letter addressed to the Queen, he committed the entire letter to memory and burned it. Then he set out for France. When he arrived safely in Paris, he reconstructed the letter from memory and delivered it in person to Antoinette at Versailles, "telling her that the feelings of an old and faithful subject had given him courage to form and execute such a resolution."^

With her friends gone, Antoinette had few confidantes. Her sister-in-law Elisabeth was a loving friend, but her two other sisters-in-law were hardly any comfort to her. Artois's wife had always been a cipher, and Provence's wife, who was "given to drink," was inclined to create "disgusting scenes." Adelaide was a spiteful critic, and Victoire, once plump and cheerful, now kept to her apartments and worked at her sewing behind a canvas blind which screened her from the curious. Altogether the royal family gave Antoinette scant companionship and little peace, particularly as there were political factions forming around the King's brothers which led to quarrels and heightened tensions.

The departure of Yolande de Polignac meant that the Prince and Princess required a new governess to supervise the servants of their households and oversee their education. Madame de Tourzel was chosen, a widow of forty who was staunchly loyal to the monarchy. Antoinette wrote out a long memorandum for the new governess, describing each of the under-servants of the royal children in detail.

The heir to the throne, now aged four and a half, had in his household three under-govemesses, one of whom, Madame de

Soucy, was "a bit severe with the child" but "very faithful," and another of whom, Madame de Villefort, "spoiled him." The eight chamberwomen Antoinette stigmatized as being guilty of "bad talk in the chamber," and the cleric assigned to teach the boy his alphabet, the Abb6 d'Avaux, was "not all he ought to be;" until recently the Abbe had been tutor to both children, but the Queen had been forced to find a replacement for him as tutor to her daughter. The Prince's doctor, Monsieur Brunier, was "jokey and familiar" though something of a scandalmonger.

As for Madame Royale*s household, there were two "first women" and seven chamberwomen, evidently more discreet in their conversation than the dauphin's women, and Madame Brunier, the doctor's wife, who had looked after the Princess since her birth. Madame Brunier was loyal and zealous, a cheery woman if greedy and somewhat coarse. Her daughter, Madame Fr^minville, was "a person of true merit," mature and responsible. She had three children of her own, but devoted herself to Th^r^se, earning her complete love and trust. It was Madame Freminville who took over her education from the disappointing Abbe d'Avaux. As for the rest of the servants, Antoinette wrote, there were only some menials, "utterly insignificant beings," who were not worth mentioning by name.^

All the palace servants were fearful on the morning of July 17, when they learned that the King was going to Paris. Antoinette was almost certain that he would be taken prisoner once he reached the city. She made her plans accordingly, ordering her traveling vehicles prepared and writing out a speech she would deliver to the National Assembly in the event that she found herself alone. "Gentlemen," she planned to say, "I come to place in your hands the wife and family of your sovereign; do not suffer those who have been united in heaven to be put asunder on earth."

She rehearsed the speech again and again, Madame Campan remembered, "her voice often interrupted by her tears and by the sorrowful exclamation. They will never let him return!'"*^

Louis was amazingly calm, everyone else was agitated. He knew that he was risking his safety on the affection of his subjects, but as always he trusted in that affection, and believed that he would be all right. He had rescinded the order that had begun all the turmoil in the capital, he had recalled Necker. By remaining at

Versailles instead of running away, as so many others had done, he showed his trust in his subjects, and his good will. Surely they would not take advantage of him or harm him. Just in case, however, he made his will before departing, and named Provence as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, with full authority to act for him in his absence.

At ten in the morning the King set out for the capital, with twelve bodyguards, thirty deputies from the National Assembly and an escort from the town guard of Versailles. Outside Paris Lafayette's National Guard awaited him, to lead him to the H6tel de Ville. The Parisians turned out in their thousands to watch as their sovereign was led along, one observer wrote, "like a tame bear." The crowd was orderly, yet Louis must have been alarmed to see that every single person, man or woman, layman or cleric, held a weapon. Some had muskets, others swords, still others held an array of improvised weapons—scythes, sickles, carpenter's chisels, iron spikes affixed to the end of long sticks, sledge hammers, anything potentially lethal. When the King got out of his carriage at the city hall, "he had to pass through an alley of men," wrote the American Tom Paine, then in Paris, "who crossed them over his head under which he had to pass, impressed perhaps with the apprehension that someone was to fall upon his head."

Inside the Hdtel de Ville, Louis listened to speeches and made a speech himself. The Mayor, Sylvain Bailly, gave him a cockade in the revolutionary colors of red, white and blue to wear in his hat (red and blue were the colors of the city of Paris, white the Bourbon color), and he obligingly put it on. He showed himself to the crowd once again, now wearing the emblem of their cause, and they shouted their approval. Soon afterwards he was on his way back to the palace.

Antoinette had been waiting all day for news of her husband, closeted in her private rooms with her children. Outside, the long corridors and huge salons were hushed; "a deadly silence reigned throughout the palace," wrote Madame Campan, "fear was at its height. The King was hardly expected to return." When he finally did return, he embraced his wife and children with the fervor of a man who had been away for a very long time. "Happily no blood has been shed," he told them, "and I swear that never shall a drop of French blood be spilled by my order."

But blood was being shed, all across France. The assault on