The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France - Charles Duke Yonge (ereader that reads to you .TXT) 📗

bar of the Assembly and demanded an audience. A fortnight before he had written a letter to the president, in which he had denounced alike the Jacobin leaders of the clubs and the Girondin ministers, and had called on the Assembly to suppress the clubs; a letter which had produced no effect except to unite the two parties against whom it was aimed more closely together, and also to give them a warning of his hostility to them, which, till he was in a position to show it by deeds, it would have been wiser to have avoided.

He now repeated by word of mouth the statements and arguments which he had previously advanced in writing, with the addition of a denunciation of the recent insurrection and its authors, whom, he insisted, the Assembly was bound instantly to prosecute. His speech was not ill received; for the Constitutionalists, who knew what he designed to say, had mustered in full force, and had packed the galleries beforehand with hired clappers; and many even of the Deputies who did not belong to that party cheered him, so obvious to all but the most desperate was the danger to the whole State, if Santerre and his brigands should be allowed to become its masters. But they cared little for a barren indignation which had no more effectual weapon than reproaches. He had said enough to exasperate, but had not done enough to intimidate; while those whom he denounced had greater boldness and presence of mind than he, and had the forces on which they relied for support at hand and available. They instantly turned the latter on himself, and in their turn denounced him for having left his army without leave. He was frightened, or at least perplexed, by such a charge. He made no reply, but seemed like one stupefied; and it was only through the eloquence of one of his friends, M. Ramond, that he was saved from the impeachment with which Guadet and Vergniaud openly threatened him for quitting the army without leave.

Ramond's oratory succeeded in carrying through the Assembly a motion in his favor, and several companies of the National Guard and a vast multitude of the citizens showed their sympathy with his views by escorting him with acclamations to his hotel. But neither their evident inclination to support him, nor even the danger with which he himself had been threatened, could give him resolution and firmness in action. For a moment he made a demonstration as if he were prepared to secure the success of his designs by force. He proposed that the king should the next morning review Acloque's companies of the National Guard, after which he himself would harangue them on their duty to the king and Constitution. But the Girondins persuaded Petion to exert his authority, as mayor, to prohibit the review. La Fayette was weak enough to submit to the prohibition; and, quickened, it is said, by intelligence that Petion was preparing to arrest him, the next day retired in haste from Paris and rejoined the army.

He had done the king nothing but harm. He had shown to all the world that though the Royalists and Constitutionalists might still be numerically the stronger party, for all purposes of action they were by far the weaker. He had encouraged those whom he had intended to daunt, and strengthened those whom he had hoped to crush; and they, in consequence, proceeded in their treasons with greater boldness and openness than ever. Marie Antoinette, as we have seen, had expressed her belief that they designed to assassinate Louis, and she now employed herself, as she had done once before, in quilting him a waistcoat of thickness sufficient to resist a dagger or a bullet; though so incessant was the watch which was set on all their movements that it was with the greatest difficulty that she could find an opportunity of trying it on him. But it was not the king, but she herself, who was the victim whom the traitors proposed to take off in such a manner; and in the second week of July a man was detected at the foot of the staircase leading to her apartments, disguised as a grenadier, and sufficiently equipped with murderous weapons. He was seized by the guard, who had previous warning of his design; but was instantly rescued by a gang of ruffians like himself, who were on the watch to take advantage of the confusion which might be expected to arise from the accomplishment of his crime.

Meanwhile the Assembly wavered, hesitated, and did nothing; the Girondins and Jacobins were fertile in devising plots, and active in carrying them out. One day, as if seized with a panic at some report of the strength of the Austrian and Prussian armies, the Assembly again passed a vote declaring the country in danger; on another, roused by a letter which a Madame Gouges, a daughter of a fashionable dress-maker, a lady of more notoriety than reputation, but who cultivated a character for philosophy, took upon herself to write to them, and still more by a curiously sentimental speech of the Bishop of Lyons, with the appropriate name of Lamourette,[5] the members bound themselves to have for the future but one heart and one sentiment; and for some minutes Jacobins, Girondins, Constitutionalists, and Royalists were rushing to and fro across the floor of the hall in a frenzy of mutual benevolence, embracing and kissing one another, and swearing an eternal friendship. They even sent a message to Louis to beg him to come and witness this new harmony. He came at once. With his disposition, it was not strange that he yielded to the illusion of the strange spectacle which he beheld. He shed tears of joy, declared the complete agreement of his sentiments with theirs, and predicted that their union would save France. They escorted him back to the Tuileries with cheers, and the very same evening, after a stormy debate, which was a remarkable commentary on the affection which they had just vowed to one another, they set him at defiance, insulting him by annulling some decrees to which he had given his assent, and passing a vote of confidence in Petion as mayor.

The Feast of the Federation, as it was called, passed off quietly. The king again recognized the Constitution before the altar erected in the Champ de Mars, and, as he drove back to the palace, the populace accompanied him the whole way, never ceasing their acclamations of "Vivent le roi et la reine![6]" till they had dismounted and returned to their apartments. Such a close of the day had been expected by no one. La Fayette, who seems at last to have become really anxious to save the lives of the king and queen, and to have been seriously convinced that they were in danger, had now formally opened a communication with the court. He concerted his plans with Marshal Luckner, and had learned so much wisdom from his recent failure that he now placed no reliance on any thing but a display of superior force. He accordingly proposed to Louis to bring up a battalion of picked men from his and the marshal's armies to escort him to the Champ de Mars; and, judging that, even if the feast should pass off without any fresh danger, the king could never be considered permanently safe while he remained in Paris, he recommended that on the next day, Louis, still under the protection of the same troops, should announce to the Assembly his departure for Compiegne, and should at once quit the capital for that town, to which trusty officers would in the mean time have brought up other divisions of the army in sufficient strength to set all disaffected and seditious spirits at defiance.

The plan was at all events well conceived, but it was declined. Louis did not apparently distrust the marquis's good faith, but he doubted his ability to carry out an enterprise requiring an energy and decision of which no part of La Fayette's career had given any indication; while the queen distrusted his loyalty even more than his capacity. One of those with whom she took counsel expressed his opinion of the marquis's real object by saying that he might save the monarch, but not the monarchy; and she replied that his head was still full of republican notions which he had brought from America, and refused to place the slightest confidence in him. We may suspect that she did not do him entire justice, and may rather believe, with Louis, that he was now acting in good faith; but, with a recollection of all that she had suffered at his hands, we can not wonder at her continued distrust of him.[A7]

But his was not the only plan proposed for the escape of the royal family. Bertrand de Moleville, though no longer Louis's minister, retained his undiminished confidence, and he had found a place which he regarded as admirably suited for a temporary retreat--the Castle of Gaillon, near the left bank of the Seine, in Normandy, the people of which province were almost universally loyal. It was within the twenty leagues from Paris which the Assembly had fixed for the limit of the royal journeys; while yet, in case of the worst, it was likewise within easy distance of the coast. An able engineer officer had pronounced it to be thoroughly defensible; and the Count d'Hervilly, with other officers of proved courage and presence of mind, undertook the arrangement of all the military measures necessary for the safe escort of the entire royal family, which they themselves were willing to conduct, with the aid of some detachments of the Swiss Guards; while the necessary funds were provided by the loyal devotion of the Duke de Liancourt, who placed a million of francs at his sovereign's disposal, and of one or two other nobles who came forward with almost equally lavish offerings. Louis certainly at first regarded the plan with favor, and, in the opinion of M. Bertrand, it would not have been difficult to induce him to adopt it, if the queen could have been brought over to a similar view.

Unhappily several motives combined to disincline her to it. The insurrection which the Girondins[8] were preparing had originally been fixed for the 29th of July; but, a few days before, M. Bertrand learned that it had been postponed till the 10th of August. This gave him time to mature his arrangements, all of which, as he reckoned, could be completed in time for the king to leave Paris on the evening of the 8th. But before that day arrived news had reached the court that the Duke of Brunswick, the Prussian commander-in-chief, had put his army in motion, and that he was not likely to meet any obstacle sufficient to prevent him from marching at once on Paris; a measure which, to quote the language of M. Bertrand, "the queen was too anxious to see accomplished to hesitate at believing in its execution.[9]" And at the same time some of the Jacobin leaders--Danton, Petion, and Santerre--had opened communications with the Government, and had undertaken for a large bribe to prevent the threatened outbreak. The money had been paid to them, and Marie Antoinette more than once boasted to her attendants that they were now safe, as having gained over Danton; placing the firmer reliance on this mode of extrication because it coincided with her belief that the mutual jealousy of the two parties would dispose one of them at least eventually to embrace the cause of the king, as their beat ally against the other. The result seems to show that the Jacobins only took the bribe the more effectually to lull their destined victims into a false security.

A third consideration, and that apparently not the