To the scaffold (45 page)

After several hours Fersen left the palace to make arrangements for his return journey. It was dark, he was not intercepted, and met his traveling companion who told him that a light carriage was ready and waiting. Returning to the Tuileries with the protection of a hussar officer he supped with the King and Queen and then said his good-byes. He saw that Louis was resolute in his determination to stay in Paris, and that Antoinette, who was just then occupied with a "detestable" letter from several of the Assembly deputies, would not be able to force him to leave. Both of them were enmeshed in futile intrigues and negotiations, they were sinking deeper and deeper into a dangerous quagmire, and the more they struggled, the more surely they were lost. Putting on his disguise and whistling to his dog, Fersen left the Tuileries at midnight by the main gate, convinced that his beloved friends were beyond help.

i^28^

N the middle of March 1792, some members came to a meeting of the Jacobin Club wearing red caps of an unusual kind. They were knitted woolen stocking caps, worn down low over the ears and coming to a point at the back of the head. The rest of the membership broke into applause at the sight of these caps, and at the next club meeting the president, secretaries and all the speakers wore similar ones, as did more than three hundred of the members. The next day red bonnets were to be found throughout Paris, in the faubourgs, along the boulevards, in the public squares and gardens, at the Palais Royal and the theater. In no time at all the red cap had become "the headgear of all French patriots," as obligatory as the tricolor cockade and more pervasive.

The red cap was the appropriate finishing touch in what was coming to be the revolutionary costume: loose-fitting trousers—in contrast to the tight breeches of the aristocrats—and a short jacket, wooden shoes, suspenders, perhaps a red sash at the waist, short, unpowdered hair—in contrast to the powdered wig of the privileged classes—and the tricolor cockade and red cap. Beards were frowned upon, the thing to have was a long, thick mustache that gave the face a fearsome appearance. Soldiers had always favored luxuriant mustaches, now civilians adopted them and in the countryside the phrase "the mustache men" (hommes a moustache) became synonymous with "the radical bandits from Paris."

The fad for red caps appeared just as Paris received one of the worst economic shocks to date. The assignats, which since the

J04 CAROLLY ERICKSON

beginning of the year had been losing value at the rate of ten percent a month, reached a new low and as a result food became so scarce that old rumors of court plots to starve the people were revived. Food riots now became as commonplace and violent as political protests; Parisians were disillusioned and enraged to realize that the new constitution had not brought prosperity but its opposite. Their rage demanded new objects. It was not enough to hate and vilify the King and Queen, the privileged classes and the exploiters: now the public wrath was directed at the "enemies of the revolution."

The food shortages, the fiscal crisis, the divisions in the Assembly, the general state of disharmony and wretchedness all were perceived by the more vocal and aroused part of the populace as having a single sinister cause. The revolution was being betrayed. The proof of this betrayal was evident on all sides, but especially in the presence of Austrian troops just across the frontier. Who were the traitors? The Queen, primarily, and the King who had shown his deceitfulness in trying to escape, and the emigres with their mock court at Coblentz and their conspiracies. The aristocrats, the monarchists, even the moderate deputies in the Legislative Assembly—all were traitors, to the extent that they were not actively furthering the progress of liberty. And the progress of liberty, it seemed to the furious Parisians, demanded war.

War was cathartic, it would purge France of its anti-revolutionary elements. War would regenerate the floundering revolution, focus it and bring it fresh glory. Never mind those contrary voices insisting that the armies of France were not prepared to fight, that they lacked officers and supplies, that the foreign regiments would refuse combat and that even the generals were reluctant to go into battle without more men, materiel and money. The traitors must be overthrown, the Austrian menace annihilated once and for all.

The Prussians, with their superb, some said invincible, army now joined the Austrians when the two countries became allied early in February 1792. Then on March 1 the prevaricating Emperor Leopold died and was succeeded by his bellicose son Francis IL The allied armies were soon on the move and the reigning political faction in the Assembly, the Girondins—so named because many of its members came from the department of the Gironde, in the Bordeaux region—pushed aggressively for war.

At the end of March France sent Emperor Francis a formal warning that unless Austria backed down from her combative stance war would be declared. Three weeks later Louis was placed in the ironic position of signing a decree committing his country to fight against the very forces he hof)ed would rescue him.

Meanwhile the red caps were all over Paris, and those who wore them were forming themselves into spontaneously organized gangs and assaulting the "enemies of the revolution." Priests, gentlemen, anyone who did not dress like a revolutionary sansculotte (a breechless, or trousered, citizen) was liable to be set upon, beaten and forced to put on a red cap. If the victim had the impudence to resist, or to spit on the red cap in protest, he was stripped naked and cudgeled with a thick hawthorn branch. The National Guard could not keep order, there were too many violent outbreaks, too many murders and robberies, especially in the faubourgs St.-Antoine or St.-Marcel, where middle-class people feared to go after dark. With macabre joy the Parisians danced in the streets when they heard that Emperor Leopold was dead, and celebrated wildly whenever one of their number appeared with a bloody head stuck to a pike. Cheering, dancing, singing the "C^a ira," they paraded in the Tuileries gardens shouting "Death to the King! Kill the Queen! Tremble, tyrants! We are the sansculottes!!"

They crowded into the Place de Gr^ve on April 25 to watch an execution carried out by a new device, the invention of the Parisian physician and deputy Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Dr. Guillotin's machine, a sort of giant chopping block with a heavy sharp blade that fell when released severing the victim's head, was intended to introduce social equality to the arena of punishment. In the past, criminals had been put to death in different ways, determined by their status: noblemen were granted the privilege of beheading—the quickest and most honorable method—while lesser men were hanged or tortured to death, their arms and legs broken and their pain-racked bodies fastened to a wheel. Now all men would die as formerly only nobles had, their heads "separated from their bodies in less time than it takes to wink."

Dr. Guillotin's device was celebrated in the j)opular press as an "ingenious and gentle" machine that would spare criminals great pain by dispatching them in a "prompt and expeditious" fashion. "The grandeur and elegance of the spectacle will attract

many more people to the place of execution," announced Uami du peuple, "More people will be impressed, and the rule of law will be more greatly respected."^ The sight of the "blade of eternity" would embolden the criminal to make a more heroic end, and to keep his dignity. Dr. Guillotin was to be congratulated for conferring a boon on mankind, which in gratitude would name the new machine after its inventor, giving it the "sweet and charming" name of "Guillotine."^

The first human trial of the guillotine in April of 1792 was something of an experiment, which gave the many spectators an added frisson. The machine had been used on sheep and calves, and tested on human corpses brought from the charity hospitals. But no one could be certain that it would work as efficiently on a live criminal, and the wretched forger scheduled to be executed that day must have suffered the added torment of doubting the efficiency of the savage blade. Scientists speculated about whether the head might live on after it was separated from the trunk, whether the mind might go on thinking, the eyes seeing, the tongue wagging. But the forger's execution proved to be effortless and swift, and made a very good show, and the observers went off afterwards satisfied that they had witnessed a new and entirely satisfactory form of public vengeance.

The initial weeks of the war were going very badly. Day after day news came from the Austrian Netherlands of French soldiers retreating in the face of the enemy, giving up and deserting, showing insubordination and refusing discipline. The spirit of liberty, so cherished in revolutionary Paris and so carefully nurtured over the past three years, proved to be a destructive force in a revolutionary army. Soldiers took votes on whether or not to obey their officers, mutinied at will, and did not hesitate to eliminate "tyrant" officers when they tried to enforce their authority.

The army under General Dillon marched against Toumai, only to be turned back under heavy fire. The French fled in terror, claiming they had been betrayed and blaming Dillon. They mobbed him and tore him to pieces. The Due de Biron's men too were in retreat. Lafayette knew better than to launch his troops against the Austrians; the best he could do, given his crippled, ill-equipped forces, was to take up a defensive position and wait for the enemy's assault. General Rochambeau resigned. General Luckner hung back and waited to see what would happen.

To the Scaffold soj

By the first week of May all hope of a French victory was gone. The generals urged the government to make peace. Two-thirds of the officers had emigrated; now many of the remaining ones were deserting their men and, with the men rebelling or melting away in large numbers, the entire army was crumbling. And the Austrians were advancing and would soon be on French soil.

In Paris wild fears and even wild rumors overrode all reason. People told one another that hordes of deserters would soon be swarming into the city, taking by force what little food there was and mowing down the citizenry. Priests who had refused to take the oath of loyalty were thought to be agents of the enemy, and were threatened with deportation to Guiana by a law of the Assembly. The King's household guard was sent away from the palace, and twenty thousand national guardsmen were brought from the provinces to the capital for protection. Louis used his veto power to oppose this transfer of guards—and was accused of conspiring with the enemy. Red-capped men tramped along the narrow alleyways in the heart of Paris, shouting that the Austrians were coming, calling people to arms to defend the revolution, breaking limbs and heads and spreading mayhem. Ordinary life was suspended, work stopped for no workman could afford the crazily inflated prices of bread and wine, vegetables and wood. After three years of excitement and uproar, it looked as though the city was about to be engulfed by a foreign army, its liberties crushed forever.

Such a catastrophe had to be the result of a massive and sustained betrayal, centered at the Tuileries. The Tuileries and its occupants had to be destroyed, before they completed the destruction of France.

On June 20, the anger of the Parisians boiled over and the ever-present crowd in the Tuileries gardens broke into the palace through an unlocked gate. The palace guards quickly gave way before the thousands of rioters, armed in the fashion which by now had become traditional with pikes, axes, clubs and knives. They carried banners reading "Tremble, tyrants, the people are armed!" and "Union of the Faubourgs St.-Antoine and St.-Marcel, we are the sansculottes!"

"The Austrian! The Austrian! Where is she? Her head! Her head!"

"Where is the fat pig?"

Doors were smashed in, locks broken, delicate furniture overturned and trampled. The servants fled in panic before the onrushing swarm of sansculottes, who dragged a cannon with them into the palace and rampaged from room to room, shouting and swearing and demanding the hearts and entrails of the King and Queen.

More and more people swelled the throng of marauders, pouring in from all parts of the city—and still no force of guardsmen appeared to resist them. The Mayor, Jerome Petion, did nothing. When the angry torrent reached the royal apartments the War Minister shouted, "Twenty grenadiers to protect His Majesty!"

"From all sides came the clatter of arms," wrote Madame de Tourzel, who was present when the Palace was stormed, "and the most outrageous remarks against the King." The crowd burst into the antechamber where Louis was. Elisabeth was with him, but Antoinette, who had tried to reach him, had been "dragged almost by force" to the dauphin's rooms by her frightened servants, who knew the danger she ran. Louis confronted the invading Parisians with courage, facing them down, answering their shouts of "Down with the veto! Ratify the decrees! Long live the nation!" with mild assurances that he too supported the nation and the constitution, and that he had sworn to uphold both.

"A man who has nothing with which to reproach himself knows neither fear nor dread," he said calmly, if rather senten-tiously, and he seized the hand of a man standing near him and put it against his embroidered waistcoat, over his heart. "See if it beats more quickly," he told the man.