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

weakest, was Marie Antoinette's rooted dislike of the Constitutionalist party. In their rants the Duc de Liancourt had taken his seat in the first Assembly; though, as he assured M. Bertrand, the king himself was aware that his object in so doing had been to serve his majesty in the most effectual manner; and he was also the statesman whose advice had mainly contributed to induce the king to visit Paris after the destruction of the Bastile, a step which she had always regarded as the forerunner and cause of some of the most irremediable encroachments of the Revolutionists. Even the duke's present devotion to the king's cause could not entirely efface from her mind the impression that he was not in his heart friendly to the royal authority. She urged these arguments on the king. The last probably weighed with him but little: the two former he felt as strongly as the queen herself; and he delayed his decision, sending word to M. Bertrand that he had resolved to defer his departure "till the last extremity.[10]" His faithful servant was in amazement. "When," he exclaimed, "was the last extremity to be looked for, if it had not already come?" But his astonishment was turned to absolute despair when the next day M. Montmorin informed him that the project had been entirely given up, the queen herself remarking "that M. Bertrand overlooked the circumstance that he was throwing them altogether into the hands of the Constitutionalists."

She has been commonly blamed for this decision, as that which was the chief cause of all the subsequent calamities which overwhelmed her and the whole family. Yet it is not difficult to understand the motives which influenced her, and it is impossible to refrain from regarding them with sympathy. She was now at the decisive moment of a crisis which might well perplex the clearest head. There could be no doubt that the coming insurrection would be the turning-point of the long conflict which had now lasted three years; and it was a conflict in which her husband's throne was certainly at stake, perhaps even his and her own life. They had indeed been so for three years; and throughout the whole contest her view had constantly been that honor was still dearer than life; and honor she identified with the preservation of her husband's crown, her children's inheritance. Mirabeau had said that she would not care to save her life if she could not save the crown also; and, though she can not have decided without a terrible conflict of feeling, her decision was now in conformity with Mirabeau's judgment of her. In the preceding year the journey to Varennes had been treated by the Republicans as a plea for pronouncing the deposition of the king; and, though they were defeated then, they were undoubtedly stronger in the new Assembly. On the other hand, she suspected that they themselves had some misgivings as to the chance of a second attack on the palace being more successful than the former one had proved; and that the openness with which the preparations for it were announced was intended to terrify Louis and herself into a second flight; and she might not unreasonably infer that what their enemies desired was not the wisest course for them to adopt. To fly would evidently be to leave the whole field in both the Assembly and the city open to their enemies. It might save their lives, but it would almost to a certainty forfeit the crown. To stay and face the coming danger might indeed lose both, but it might also save both; and she determined rather to risk all, both crown and life, in the endeavor to save all, rather than to save the one by the deliberate sacrifice of the other. It was a gallant and unselfish determination: if in one point of view it was unwise, it was at least becoming her lofty lineage, and consistent with her heroic character.


CHAPTER XXXVII.

Preparation for a New Insurrection.--Barbaroux brings up a Gang from Marseilles.--The King's last Levee.--The Assembly rejects a Motion for the Impeachment of La Fayette.--It removes some Regiments from Paris.-- Preparations of the Court for Defense.--The 10th of August.--The City is in Insurrection.--Murder of Mandat.--Louis reviews the Guards.--He takes Refuge with the Assembly.--Massacre of the Swiss Guards.--Sack of the Tuileries.--Discussions in the Assembly.--The Royal Authority is suspended.

The die was cast. Nothing was left but to wait, with such patience as might be, for the coming explosion, which was sure not to be long deferred. Madame de Stael has said that there never can be a conspiracy, in the proper sense of the word, in Paris; and that if there could be one, it would be superfluous, since every one at all times follows the majority, and no one ever keeps a secret. But on this occasion the chief movers of sedition studiously discarded all appearance of concealment. Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonne wrote the king a letter couched in terms of the most insolent defiance, and signed with all their names, in which they openly announced to him that an insurrection was organized which should be abandoned if he replaced Roland and his colleagues in the ministry, but which should surely break on the palace and overwhelm it if he refused. And Barbaroux, who had promised Madame Roland to bring up from Marseilles and other towns in the south a band of men capable of any atrocity, had collected a gang of five hundred miscreants, the refuse of the galleys and the jails, and paraded them in triumph through the streets, which their arrival was destined and intended to deluge with blood.

And yet Louis, or, to speak more correctly, Marie Antoinette, for it was with her that every decision rested, preferred to face the impending struggle in Paris. She still believed that the king had many friends in whose devotion and gallantry he could confide to the very death. On Sunday, the 5th of August, the very last Sunday which he was ever to behold as the acknowledged sovereign of the land, his levee was attended by a more than usually numerous and brilliant company; though the gayety appropriate to such a scene was on this occasion clouded over by the anxiety for their royal master and mistress which sobered every one's demeanor, and spread a gloom over every countenance. And three days later both the Assembly and the National Guard displayed feelings which, to so sanguine a temper as hers, seemed to show a disposition to make a stout resistance to the further progress of disorder. The Assembly, by a majority of more than two to one, rejected a motion made by Vergniaud for the impeachment of La Fayette for his conduct in June; and when the mob fell upon those who had voted against it, as they came out of the hall, the National Guard came promptly to their rescue, and inflicted severe chastisement on the foremost of the rioters.

The vote of the Assembly may be said to have been the last it ever gave for any object but the promotion of anarchy. It more than neutralized its effect the very next day, when it passed a decree for the immediate removal of three regiments of the line which were quartered in Paris. It even at first included in its resolution the Swiss Guards also; but was subsequently compelled to withdraw that clause, since an old treaty with Switzerland expressly secured to the republic the right of always furnishing a regiment for the honorable service of guarding the palace. And at the same time, as if to punish the National Guard for its conduct on the previous day, another vote broke up the staff of that force; cashiered its finest companies, the grenadiers and the mounted troopers, on the plea that such distinctions were inconsistent with equality; and filled up the vacancies with men who were the very dregs of the city, many of whom were, in fact, secret agents of the Jacobins, by whose aid they hoped to spread disaffection through the entire force. The afternoon of the 9th was passed in anxious preparation by both the conspirators and those whom they were about to attack. The king and queen were not destitute of faithful adherents, whom their very danger only rendered the more zealous to place all their strength, their valor, and, as they truly foreboded, their lives, at the disposal of their honored and threatened sovereigns. The veteran Marshal de Mailly, one of those gallant nobles whose devoted loyalty had been so scandalously insulted by La Fayette[1] in the spring of the preceding year, though now eighty years of age, hastened to the defense of his royal master and mistress, and brought with him a chivalrous phalanx of above a hundred gentlemen, all animated with the same self-sacrificing heroism, as his own, to fight, or, if need should be, to die for their king and queen, though they had no arms but their swords. It seemed fortunate, too, that the command of the National Guard for the day fell by rotation to an officer named Mandat, a man of high professional skill, intrepid courage, and unshaken in his zeal for the royal cause, though in former days the constitutionalists had reckoned him among their adherents. His brigade numbered about two thousand four hundred men, on most of whom he could thoroughly rely. And it was no slight proof of his force of character and energy, as well as of his address, that, as the National Guard could not be employed out of the routine of their regular duty without a special authorisation from the civil power, he contrived to extort from Petion, as mayor of the city, a formal authority to augment his brigade for the special occasion, and, if force should be used against him, to repel it by force.

The Swiss Guard of about a thousand men were all trustworthy; and there was also a small body of heavy cavalry of the gendarmery who had proved true enough to resist all the seductions of the conspirators. There were likewise a few cannon. In all, nearly four thousand men could be mustered for the defense of the palace; a force, if well equipped and well led, not inadequate to the task of holding it out for some time against any number of undisciplined assailants. But they were not well armed. They were nearly destitute of ammunition, and Mandat's most vehement entreaties and remonstrances could not wring out from Petion an order for a supply of cartridges, though, as he told him, several companies had not four rounds left, some had only one; and though it was notorious that the police had served out ammunition to the Marseillese, who had no claim to a single bullet. Still less were they well led; for at such a crisis every thing depended on the king's example, and Louis was utterly wanting to himself.

As night approached, the agitation in the palace, and still more in the city, grew more and more intense. It was a brilliant and a warm night. By ten o'clock the mob began to cluster in the streets, many only curious and anxious from uncertain fear; those in the secret hastening toward the point of rendezvous. The rioters also had cannon, and by eleven their artillery-men had taken charge of their guns. The conspirators had got possession of all the churches; and as the hour of midnight struck, a single cannon-shot gave the signal, and from every steeple and tower in the city the fatal tocsin began to peal. The insurrection was begun.

Petion, who, from some motive which is not very intelligible, wished to save appearances, and who, though in fact he had been eager in promoting the insurrection, pretended innocence of all complicity in it even to the Assembly, whom he was