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

royal followed with another minister. And thus, with the Princess de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel, and one or two other ministers and attendants, the royal family left the palace of their ancestors, which only one of them was ever to behold again. As they quit the saloon, moved down the stairs, and crossed the garden, their every step was one toward a downfall and a destruction which could never be retraced. Marie Antoinette felt it to be so, and, as she reached the foot of the staircase, cast restless and anxious glances around, looking perhaps even then for any prospect of succor or of effectual resistance which might present itself. One of the Swiss misunderstood her, and with rude fidelity endeavored to encourage her. "Fear nothing, madame," said he, "your majesty is surrounded by honest citizens." She laid her hand on her heart. "I do fear nothing," and passed on without another word.

As they crossed the garden the king broke the silence. "How unusually early," he remarked, "the leaves fall this year!" To those who heard him, the bareness which he remarked seemed an omen of the fate which awaited himself, about to be stripped of his royal dignity; perhaps even, like some superfluous crowder of the grove, to fall beneath the axe. The Assembly had already been deliberating whether it should invite him to take refuge with them when they heard that he was approaching. It was instantly voted that a deputation should be sent to meet him, which, after a few words of respectful salutation, fell in behind. A vast crowd was collected outside the doors of the hall. They hooted the king, and, still more bitterly, the queen, as they advanced. "Down with Veto!" was the chief cry; but mingled with it were still more unmanly insults, invoking more especially death on all the women. But the Guards kept the mob at a distance, though when they reached the hall the Jacobins made an effort to deprive them of that protection. They declared that it was illegal for soldiers to enter the hall, as indeed it was; yet without them the princes must at the last moment have been exposed to all the fury of the mob. At this critical moment Roederer showed both fidelity and presence of mind. He implored the deputies to suspend the law which forbade the entrance of the troops, and, while the Jacobins were reviling him and his proposal, he pretended to suppose that it had been agreed to, and led forward a detachment of soldiers who cleared the way. One grenadier look up the dauphin in his arms and carried him in; and, although the pressure of the crowd was extreme, at last the whole family were placed within the hall in such safety as the Assembly was able or disposed to afford them.

Louis bore himself not without dignity. His words were few but calm. "I am come here to prevent a great crime. I think I can not be better placed, nor more safely, gentlemen, than among you." The president, who happened to be Vergniaud, while appearing to desire to give him confidence, yet avoided uttering a single word, except the simple address of "sire," which should be a recognition of the royal dignity, if indeed his speech was not a studied disavowal of it. Louis might reckon, he said, on the firmness of the National Assembly: its members had sworn to die in support of the rights of the people and of the constituted authorities: and then, on the plea that the Assembly must continue its deliberations, and that the law forbade them to be conducted in the presence of the sovereign, he assigned him and his family a little box behind the president's chair, which was usually set apart for the reporters of the debates. A Jacobin deputy proposed their removal into one of the committee-rooms, with the idea, as he afterward boasted, that it would be easy there to admit a band of assassins to murder them all; but Vergniaud and his party divined his object and overruled him. It might seem that the Girondins, though they had been the original promoters and chief organizers of the insurrection, were as yet disposed to be content with the overthrow of the throne, and had not arrived at the hardihood which can not be sated without murder; and it is a remarkable instance of the rapidity with which unprincipled men sink deeper and deeper into iniquity, that they who now exerted themselves successfully to save the life of Louis, five months afterward were as unanimous as the most ferocious Jacobins in destroying him.

One object of Louis in abandoning his palace had been to save the lives of the National Guards and of the Swiss, by withdrawing them from what he regarded as an unequal combat with the infuriated multitude; and of the National Guard the greater part did escape, drawing off silently in small detachments, when the sovereign whom it had been their duty to defend, seemed no longer to require their service. But the Swiss remained bravely at their posts around the royal staircase, though, as they abstained from provoking the rioters by any active opposition, which now seemed to have no object, they hoped that they might escape attack. But the mob and Santerre were bent on their destruction. Some of the insurgents tried to provoke them by threats. Some endeavored to tamper with them to desert their allegiance. But an accidental interruption suddenly terminated their brief period of inaction. In the confusion a pistol went off, and the Swiss fancied it was meant as a signal for an assault upon them. Thinking that the time was come to defend their own lives, they leveled their muskets and fired: they charged down the steps, driving the insurgents before them like sheep; they cleared the inner or royal court, forced their way into the Carrousel, recovered the cannon which were posted in the large square, and were so completely victorious that, had there been any superior officer at hand to direct their movements, they might even now have checked the insurrection.

There might even have been some hope had not Louis himself actually interfered to check their exertions. Hearing what they had accomplished, the gallant D'Hervilly made his way to them, and called on them to follow him to the rescue of the king. They hesitated, unwilling to leave their wounded comrades to the mercy of their enemies; but their hesitation was brief, for it was put an end to by the wounded men themselves, who bid them hasten forward; their duty, they told them, was to save the king; for themselves, they could but die where they lay.[4] There were still plenty of gallant spirits to do their duty to the king, if he could but have been persuaded to take a right view of his duty to himself and to them.

The Swiss gladly obeyed D'Hervilly's summons. Forming in close order, and as steady as on parade, they marched through the garden, one battalion moving toward the end opposite to the palace, where there was a draw-bridge which it was essential to secure; the other following D'Hervilly to the Assembly hall. Nothing could resist their advance: they forced their way up the stairs; and in a few moments a young officer, M. de Salis, at the head of a small detachment, sword in hand, entered the chamber. Some of the deputies shrieked and fled, while others, more calm, reminded him that armed men were forbidden to enter the hall, and ordered him to retire. He refused, and sent his subaltern to the king for orders. But Louis still held to his strange policy of non-resistance. Even the terrible scenes of the morning, and the deliberate attack of an armed mob upon his palace, had failed to eradicate his unwillingness to authorize his own Guards to fight in his behalf, or to convince him that when his throne (perhaps even his life and the lives of all his family) was at stake, it was nobler to struggle for victory, and, if defeated, to die with arms in his hands, than tamely to sit still and be stripped of his kingly dignity by brigands and traitors. Could he but have summoned energy to put himself at the head of his faithful Guards, as we may be sure that his brave wife urged him to do; could he have even sent them one encouraging order, one cheering word, there still might have been hope; for they had already proved that no number of Santerre's ruffians could stand before them.[5] But Louis could not even now bring himself to act; he could only suffer. His command to the officer, the last he ever issued, was for the whole battalion to lay down their arms, to evacuate the palace, and to retire to their barracks. He would not, he said, that such brave men should die. They knew that in fact he was consigning them to death without honor; but they were loyal to the last. They obeyed, though their obedience to the first part of the order rendered the last part impracticable. They laid down their arms, and were at once made prisoners; and the fate of prisoners in such hands as those of their captors was certain. A small handful, consisting, it is said, of fourteen men, escaped through the courage of one or two friends, who presently brought them plain clothes to exchange for their uniforms, but before night all the rest were massacred.

Not more fortunate were their comrades of the other battalion, except in falling by a more soldier-like death. Though no longer supported by the detachment under D'Hervilly, they succeeded in forcing their way to the draw-bridge. It was held by a strong detachment of the National Guard, who ought to have received them as comrades, but who had now caught the contagion of successful treason, and fired on them as they advanced. But the gallant Swiss, in spite of their diminished numbers still invincible, charged through them, forced their way across the bridge into the Place Louis XV., and there formed themselves into square, resolved to sell their lives dearly. It was all that was left to them to do. The mounted gendarmery, too, came up and turned against them. Hemmed in on all sides, they fell one after another; Louis, who had refused to let them die for him, having only given their death the additional pang that it had been of no service to him.

The retreat of the king had left the Tuileries at the mercy of the rioters. Furious to find that he had escaped them, they wreaked their rage on the lifeless furniture, breaking, hewing, and destroying in every way that wantonness or malice could devise. Different articles which had belonged to the queen were the especial objects of their wrath. Crowds of the vilest women arrayed themselves in her dresses, or defiled her bed. Her looking-glasses were broken, with imprecations, because they had reflected her features. Her footmen were pursued and slaughtered because they had been wont to obey her. Nor were the monsters who slew them contented with murder. They tore the dead bodies into pieces; devoured the still bleeding fragments, or deliberately lighted fire and cooked them; or, hoisting the severed limbs on pikes, carried them in fiendish triumph through the streets.

And while these horrors were going on in the palace, the tumult in the Assembly was scarcely less furious. The majority of the members--all, indeed, except the Girondins and Jacobins, who were secure in their alliance with the ringleaders--were panic-stricken. Many fled, but the rest sat still, and in terrified helplessness voted whatever resolutions the fiercest of the king's enemies chose to propose. It was an ominous preliminary to their deliberations that they admitted a deputation from the commissioners of the sections into