Dagger-proof corset for the queen.Fête in the Champ de Mars.The last appearance of the royal family in public.
A dagger-proof corset had also been prepared for the queen without her knowledge. She, however, could not be persuaded to wear it. "If they assassinateme," she said, "it will be a most happy event. It will release me from the most sorrowful existence, and may save from a cruel death the rest of the family." The 14th of July arrived. The king, queen, and dauphin were marched, like captives gracing an Oriental triumph, at the head of the procession, from the palace to the Champ de Mars. With pensive features and saddened hearts they passed along through the single file of soldiers, who were barely able to keep at bay the raging mob, furious for their blood, and maledictions fell heavily upon their ears from a thousand tongues. The fountain of tears wasdry, and despair had nerved them with stoicism. They returned to the palace in the deepest dejection, and never again appeared in the streets of Paris till they were borne to their execution.
1792
Apprehension of poison.The queen daily insulted.An assassin in the queen's chamber.
Everyday now added to the insults and anguish the royal family were called to endure. They were under such apprehension of having their food poisoned, that all the articles placed upon the table by the attendants, provided by the Assembly, were removed untouched, and they ate and drank nothing but what was secretly provided by one of the ladies of the bed-chamber. One day the queen stood at her window, looking out sadly into the garden of the Tuileries, when a soldier, standing under the window, with his bayonet upon his gun, looked up to her and said, "I wish, Austrian woman, that I had your head upon my bayonet here, that I might pitch it over the wall to the dogs in the street." And this man was placed under her window ostensibly for her protection! Whenever the queen made her appearance in the garden, she encountered insults often too outrageous to be related. An assassin, one night, with his sharpened dagger, endeavored topenetrate her chamber. She was awoke by the noise of the struggle with the guard at the door. The assassin was arrested. "What a life!" exclaimed the queen. "Insults by day, and assassins by night! But let him go. He came to murder me. Had he succeeded, the Jacobins would have borne him to-morrow in triumph through the streets of Paris."
The allied army.
The allied army, united with the emigrants, in a combined force of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand men, now entered the frontiers of France, to rescue, by military power, the royal family. They issued a proclamation, in which it was stated that "the allied sovereigns had taken up arms to stop the anarchy which prevailed in France—to give liberty to the king, and restore him to the legitimate authority of which he had been deprived." The proclamation assured the people of Paris that, if they did not immediately liberate the king and return to their allegiance, the city of Paris should be totally destroyed, and that the enemies of the king should forfeit their heads. This proclamation, with the invasion of the French territory by the allied army, fanned to the intensest fury the flames of passion already raging in all parts of the empire. Thousands of young men fromall the provinces thronged into the city, breathing vengeance against the royal family. In vain did the king declare his disapproval of these violent measures on the part of the allies. In vain did he assert his readiness to head the armies of France to repel invasion.
Parties in France.The Royalists, Girondists, and Jacobins.Consternation in Paris.The king's dethronement.Scene from the palace.Gathering of the mob.The queen with her children.Brutal remarks of the troops.
There were now three important parties in France struggling for power. The first was that of the king, and the nobles generally, wishing for the re-establishment of the monarchy. The second was that of the Girondists, wishing for the dethronement of the king and the establishment of a republic, with the power in the hands of the most influential citizens in intelligence and wealth. The third was that of the ultra Democrats or Jacobins, who wished to raise the multitude from degradation, penury, and infamy, into power, by the destruction of the throne, and the subjection of the middling classes, and the entire subversion of all the distinctions of wealth and rank. The approach of the allies united both of these latter classes against the throne. A motion was immediately introduced into the Assembly that the monarchy be entirely abolished, and a mob rioting through Paris threatened the deputies with death unless they dethroned the king. But anarmy of one hundred and fifty thousand men were marching upon Paris, and the deputies feared a terrible retribution if this new insult were heaped upon their sovereign. No person can describe the confusion and consternation with which the metropolis of France was filled. The mob declared, on the 9th of August, that, unless the dethronement were that day pronounced, they would that night sack the palace, and bear the heads of the royal family through the streets upon their pikes. The Assembly, undecided, and trembling between the two opposing perils, separated without the adoption of any resolve. All knew that a night of dreadful tumult and violence must ensue. Some hundreds of gentlemen collected around the king and queen, resolved to perish with them. Several regiments of soldiers were placed in and around the palace to drive back the mob, but it was well known that the troops would more willingly fraternize with the multitude than oppose them. The sun went down, and the street lamps feebly glimmered through the darkness of the night. The palace was filled with armed men. The gentlemen surrounding the king were all conscious of their utter inability to protect him. They had come but to share the fateof their sovereign. The queen and the Princess Elizabeth ascended to an upper part of the palace, and stepped from a low window into the dark shadow of a balcony to look out upon the tumultuous city. The sound, as of the gathering of a resistless storm, swept through all the streets, and rose loud and threatening above the usual roar of the vast metropolis. The solemn tones of the alarm bells, pealing through the night air, summoned all the desperadoes of France to their several places of rendezvous, to march upon the palace. The rumbling of artillery wheels, and the frequent discharge of musketry, proclaimed the determination and the desperation of the intoxicated mob. In darkness and silence, the queen and her sister stood listening to these fearful sounds, and their hearts throbbed violently in view of the terrible scene through which they knew that they must pass. The queen, pale but tearless, and nerved to the utmost by queenly pride, descended to the rooms below. She walked into the chamber where her beautiful son was sleeping, gazed earnestly upon him for a moment, bent over him, and imprinted upon his cheek a mother's kiss—and yet without a tear. She entered the apartment of her daughter—lovely, surpassinglylovely in all the blooming beauty of fifteen. The princess, comprehending the peril of the hour, could not sleep. Maria pressed her child to her throbbing heart, and the pride of the queen was soon vanquished by the tenderness of the mother, as with convulsive energy she embraced her, and wept in anguish almost unendurable. Shouts of unfeeling derision arose from the troops below, stationed for the protection of the royal family, and their ears were assailed by remarks of the most brutal barbarity. Hour after hour of the night lingered along, the clamor without incessantly increasing, and the crowds surrounding the palace augmenting. The excitement within the palace was so awful that no words could give it utterance. The few hundred gentlemen who had come so heroically to share the fate of their sovereign were aware that no resistance could be made to the tens of thousands who were thirsting for their blood.
Rising of the sun.Disaffection of the troops.Extremity of the royal family.
Midnight came. It was fraught with horror. The queen, in utter exhaustion, threw herself upon a sofa. At that moment a musket shot was fired in the court-yard. "There is the first shot," said the queen, with the calmness of despair, "but it will not be the last. Let us go and be with the king." At length, from thewindows of their apartment, a few gleams of light began to redden the eastern sky. "Come," said the Princess Elizabeth, "and see the rising sun." Maria went mournfully to the window, gazed long and steadfastly upon the rising luminary, feeling that, before that day's sun should go down, she and all whom she loved would be in another world. It was an awful spectacle which the light of day revealed. All the avenues to the palace were choked with intoxicated thousands. The gardens, and the court-yard surrounding the palace, were filled with troops, placed there for the protection of the sovereign, but evidently sympathizing with the mob, with whom they exchanged badges and friendly greetings. The queen, apprehensive that the children might be massacred in their beds, had them dressed, and placed by the side of herself and the king. It was recommended to the king that he should go down into the court-yard, among the troops stationed there for his defense; that his presence might possibly awaken sympathy and enthusiasm in his behalf. The king and queen, with their son and daughter, and Madame Elizabeth, went down with throbbing hearts to visit the ranks of their defenders. They were received with derisive insultsand hootings. Some of the gunners left their posts, and thrust their fists into the face of the king, insulting him with menaces the most brutal. They instantly returned to the palace, pallid with indignation and despair.
Spirit of the queen.The king's calmness.
Soon an officer came in and informed the king that all resistance was hopeless; that six pieces of artillery were already pointed against the main door of the palace; that a mob of countless thousands, well armed, and dragging with them twelve heavy cannon, were rapidly approaching the scene of conflict; that the whole populace of Paris were up in arms against the king, and that no reliance whatever could be placed in the soldiers stationed for his defense. "There is not," said he, "a single moment to lose. You will all inevitably and immediately perish, unless you hasten to the hall where the Assembly is in session, and place yourself under the protection of that body." The pride of the queen was intensely aroused in view of appealing to the Assembly, their bitterest enemy, for succor, and she indignantly replied, "I would rather be nailed to the walls of the palace than leave it to take refuge in the Assembly." And the heroism of Maria Theresa instinctively inspiring her bosom, she seized, from the belt ofan officer, two pistols, and, presenting them to the king, exclaimed, "Now, sire, is the time to show yourself, and if we must perish, let us perish with glory." The king calmly received the pistols, and silently handed them back to the officer.
The mother and the queen.
"Madame," said the messenger, "are you prepared to take upon yourself the responsibility of the death of the king, of yourself, of your children, and of all who are here to defend you? All Paris is on the march. Time presses. In a few moments it will be too late." The queen cast a glance upon her daughter, and a mother's fears prevailed. The crimson blood mounted to her temples. Then, again, she was pale as a corpse. Then, rising from her seat, she said, "Let us go." It was seven o'clock in the morning.
The royal family take refuge in the Assembly.The king's speech.
The king and queen, with their two children, Madame Elizabeth, and a few personal friends, descended the great stair-case of the Tuileries, to pass out through the bands of soldiers and the tumultuous mob to the hall of the Assembly. At the stair-case there was a large concourse of men and women, gesticulating with fury, who refused to permit the royal family to depart. The tumult was such that the membersof the royal family were separated from each other, and thus they stood for a moment mingled with the crowd, listening to language of menace and insult, when a deputy assured the mob that an order of the Assembly had summoned the royal family to them. The rioters then gave way, and the mournful group passed out of the door into the garden. They forced their way along, surrounded by a few friends, through imprecations, insults, gleaming daggers, and dangers innumerable, until they arrived at the hall of the Assembly, which the king was with difficulty enabled to enter, in consequence of the immense concourse which crowded him, thirsting for his blood, and yet held back by an unseen hand. As the king entered the hall, he said, with dignity, to the president, "I have come here to save the nation from the commission of a great crime. I shall always consider myself, with my family, safe in your hands." The royal family sat down upon a bench. Mournful silence pervaded the hall. A more sorrowful, heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring likewolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon the very floor of the sanctuary where they had sought a refuge.
The square box.The king's serenity.The mob at the palace.Brutal massacre of the king's friends.The mob sack the palace.The dead bodies of the Royalists burned.
Behind the seat of the president there was a box about ten feet square, constituting a seat reserved for reporters, guarded by an iron railing. Into this box the royal family were crowded for safety. A few friends of the king gathered around the box. The heat of the day was almost insupportable. Not a breath of air could penetrate the closely-packed apartment; and the heat, as of a furnace, glowed in the room. Scarcely had the royal family got into this frail retreat, when the noise without informed them that their friends were falling before the daggers of assassins, and the greatest alarm was felt lest the doors should be driven in by the merciless mob. In this awful hour, the king appeared as calm, serene, and unconcerned as if he were the spectator of a scene in which he had no interest. The countenance of the queen exhibited all the unvanquished firmness of her soul, as with flushed cheek and indignant eye she looked upon the drama of terror and confusionwhich was passing. The young princess wept, and her cheeks were marked with the furrows which her tears, dried by the heat, had left. The young dauphin appeared as cool and self-possessed as his father. The rattling fire of artillery, and the report of musketry at the palace, proclaimed to the royal family and the affrighted deputies the horrid conflict, or, rather, massacre which was raging there. Immediately after the king and queen had left the Tuileries, the mob broke in at every avenue. A few hundred Swiss soldiers left there remained faithful to the king. The conflict was short—the massacre awful. The infuriated multitude rushed through the halls and the apartments of the spacious palace, murdering, without mercy and without distinction of age or sex, all the friends of the king whom they encountered. The mutilated bodies were thrown out of the windows to the mob which filled the garden and the court. The wretched inmates of the palace fled, pursued in every direction. But concealment and escape were alike hopeless. Some poor creatures leaped from the windows and clambered up the marble monuments. The wretches refrained from firing at them, lest they should injure the statuary, but pricked them with theirbayonets till they compelled them to drop down, and then murdered them at their feet. A pack of wolves could not have been more merciless. The populace, now rioting in their resistless power, with no law and no authority to restrain them, gave loose rein to vengeance, and, having glutted themselves with blood, proceeded to sack the palace. Its magnificent furniture, and splendid mirrors, and costly paintings, were dashed to pieces and thrown from the windows, when the fragments were eagerly caught by those below and piled up for bonfires. Drunken wretches staggered through all the most private apartments, threw themselves, with blood-soaked boots, upon the bed of the queen, ransacked her drawers, made themselves merry over her notes, and letters, and the various articles of her toilet, and polluted the very air of the palace by their vulgar and obscene ribaldry. As night approached, huge fires were built, upon which the dead bodies of the massacred Royalists were thrown, and all were consumed.
The king dethroned.The royal family removed to the Feuillants.
During all the long hours of that dreadful day, and until two o'clock the ensuing night, the royal family remained, almost without a change of posture, in the narrow seat which had served them for an asylum. Who can measurethe amount of their endurance during these fifteen hours of woe? An act was passed, during this time, in obedience to the demands of the mob, dethroning the king. The hour of midnight had now come and gone, and still the royal sufferers were in their comfortless imprisonment, half dead with excitement and exhaustion. The young dauphin had fallen asleep in his mother's arms. Madame Elizabeth and the princess, entirely unnerved, were sobbing with uncontrollable grief. The royal family were then transferred, for the remainder of the night, to some deserted and unfurnished rooms in the old monastery of the Feuillants. Some beds and mattresses were hastily collected, and a few coarse chairs for their accommodation. As soon as they had entered these cheerless rooms, and were alone, the king prostrated himself upon his knees, with his family clinging around him, and gave utterance to the prayer, "Thy trials, O God! are dreadful. Give us courage to bear them. We adore the hand which chastens, as that which has so often blessed us. Have mercy on those who have died fighting in our defense."
Bitter sufferings of the royal family.
Utter exhaustion enabled the unhappy family to find a few hours of agitated sleep. The sun arose the ensuing morning with burning rays,and, as they fell upon the eyelids of the queen, she looked wildly around her for a moment upon the cheerless scene, and then, with a shudder, exclaiming, "Oh! I hoped it was all a dream," buried her face again in her pillow. The attendants around her burst into tears. "You see, my unhappy friends," said Maria, "a woman even more unhappy than yourselves, for she has caused all your misfortunes." The queen wept bitterly as she was informed of the massacre of her friends the preceding day. Already the royal family felt the pressure of poverty. They were penniless, and had to borrow some garments for the children. The king and queen could make no change in their disordered dress.
Taken back to the Assembly.
At ten o'clock in the morning, a guard came and conducted the royal family again to the Assembly. Immediately the hall was surrounded by a riotous mob, clamoring for their blood. At one moment the outer doors were burst open, and the blood-thirsty wretches made a rush for the interior. The king, believing that their final hour had come, begged his friends to seek their own safety, and abandon him and his family to their fate. The day of agitation and terror, however, passed away, and, as the gloom of night again darkened the city, the illustrioussufferers were reconveyed to the Feuillants. All their friends were driven from them, and guards were placed over them, who, by rudeness and insults, did what they could to add bitterness to their captivity.
The royal family consigned to the Temple.
It was decided by the Assembly that they should all be removed to the prison of the Temple. At three o'clock the next day two carriages were brought to the door, and the royal family were conveyed through the thronged streets and by the most popular thoroughfares to the prison. The enemies of royalty appeared to court the ostentatious display of its degradation. As the carriages were slowly dragged along, an immense concourse of spectators lined the way, and insults and derision were heaped upon them at every step. At last, after two hours, in which they were constrained to drain the cup of ignominy to its dregs, the carriages rolled under the gloomy arches of the Temple, and their prison doors were closed against them.
Advance of the allies.Inhuman massacre.
In the mean time the allied army was advancing with rapid strides toward the city. The most dreadful consternation reigned in the metropolis. The populace rose in its rage to massacre all suspected of being in favor of royalty. The prisons were crowded with the victims ofsuspicion. The rage of the mob would not wait for trial. The prison doors were burst open, and a general and awful massacre ensued. There was no mercy shown to the innocence of youth or to female helplessness. The streets of Paris were red with the blood of its purest citizens, and the spirit of murder, with unrestrained license, glutted its vengeance. In one awful day and night many thousands perished. The walls of rock and iron of the Temple alone protected the royal family from a similar fate.
Description of the Temple.Tower of the Temple.
The Temple was a dismal fortress which stood in the heart of Paris, a gloomy memorial of past ages of violence and crime. It was situated not far from the Bastile, and inclosed within its dilapidated yet massive walls a vast space of silence and desolation. In former ages cowled monks had moved with noiseless tread through its spacious corridors, and their matins and vespers had vibrated along the stone arches of this melancholy pile. But now weeds choked its court-yard, and no sounds were heard in its deserted apartments but the shrieking of the wind as it rushed through the grated windows and whistled around the angles of the towers. The shades of night were adding to the gloom of this wretched abode as the captiveswere led into its deserted and unfurnished cells. It was after midnight before the rooms for their imprisonment were assigned to them. It was a night of Egyptian darkness. Soldiers with drawn swords guarded them, as, by the light of a lantern, they picked their way through the rank weeds of the castle garden, and over piles of rubbish, to a stone tower, some thirty feet square and sixty feet high, to whose damp, cheerless, and dismal apartments they were consigned. "Where are you conducting us?" inquired a faithful servant who had followed the fortunes of his royal master. The officer replied, "Thy master has been used to gilded roofs, but now he will see how the assassins of the people are lodged."
The Tower of the Temple.The Tower of the Temple.
Apartments of the royal family.Obscene pictures.
Madame Elizabeth was placed in a kind of kitchen, or wash-room, with a truckle bed in it, on the ground floor. The second floor of the Tower was assigned to the attendants of the household. One common wooden bedstead and a few old chairs were the only furniture of the room. The third floor was assigned to the king, and queen, and the two children. A footman had formerly slept in the room, and had left suspended upon the walls some coarse and vulgar prints. The king, immediately glancingat them, took them down and turned their faces to the wall, exclaiming, "I would not have my daughter see such things." The king and the children soon fell soundly asleep; but no repose came to the agitated mind of Maria Antoinette. Her lofty and unbending spirit felt these indignities and atrocities too keenly. She spent the night in silent tears, and indulging in the most gloomy forebodings of the fate which yet awaited them.
Resources of the prison.Employments of the royal family.Severe restrictions.Manner of obtaining news.
The morning sun arose, but to show still more clearly the dismal aspect of the prison. But few rays could penetrate the narrow windows of the tower, and blinds of oaken plank were so constructed that the inmates could only look out upon the sky. A very humble breakfast was provided for them, and then they began to look about to see what resources their prison afforded to beguile the weary hours. A few books were found, such as an odd volume of Horace, and a few volumes of devotional treatises, which had long been slumbering, moth-eaten, in these deserted cells, where, in ages that were past, monks had performed their severe devotions. The king immediately systematized the hours, and sat down to the regular employment of teaching his children. The son and the daughter,with minds prematurely developed by the agitations and excitements in the midst of which they had been cradled, clung to their parents with the most tender affection, and mitigated the horrors of their captivity by manifesting the most engaging sweetness of disposition, and by prosecuting their studies with untiring vigor. The queen and Madame Elizabeth employed themselves with their needles. They breakfasted at nine o'clock, and then devoted the forenoon to reading and study. At one o'clock they were permitted to walk for an hour, for exercise, in the court-yard of the prison, which had long been consigned to the dominion of rubbish and weeds. But in these walks they were daily exposed to the most cruel insults from the guards that were stationed over them. At two o'clock they dined. During the long hours of the evening the king read aloud. At night, the queen prepared the children for bed, and heard them repeat their prayers. Every day, however, more severe restrictions were imposed upon the captives. They were soon deprived of pens and paper; and then scissors, knives, and even needles were taken away, under the pretense that they might be the instruments of suicide. They were allowed no communication of any kind with their friends without, and were debarred from all acquaintance with any thing transpiring in the world. In that gloomy tower of stone and iron they were buried. A faithful servant, however, adroitly opened communication with a news boy, who, under the pretense of selling the daily papers, recounted under their prison windows, in as loud a voice as he could, the leading articles of the journals he had for sale. The servant listened at the window with the utmost care, and then privately communicated the information to the king and queen.
The Royal Family in the Temple.The Royal Family in the Temple.
The Princess Lamballe.
The fate of the Princess Lamballe, who perished at this time, is highly illustrative of the horrors in the midst of which all the Royalists lived. This lovely woman, left a widow at eighteen, was attracted to the queen by her misfortunes, and became her most intimate and devoted friend. She lodged in an apartment adjoining to the queen's, that she might share all her perils. Occasionally the princess was absent to watch over and cheer an aged friend, the Duke de Penthièvre, her father-in-law, who resided at the Château de Vernon. She had gone a short time before the 20th of June to visit the aged duke, and Maria Antoinette, who foresaw the terrible storm about to burst uponthem, wrote the following touching letter to her friend, urging her not to return to the sufferings and dangers of the Tuileries. The letter was found in the hair of the Princess de Lamballe after her assassination.
Maria's letter to the Princess de Lamballe.
"Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are perfectly recovered. The good Duke de Penthièvre would be sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his advanced age and respect his virtues. I have so often told you to take heed of yourself, that, if you love me, you must think of yourself; we shall require all of our strength in the times in which we live. Oh! do not return, or return as late as possible. Your heart would be too deeply wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my misfortunes—you, who loved me so tenderly. This race of tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself if it knew all the sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never change."
"Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are perfectly recovered. The good Duke de Penthièvre would be sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his advanced age and respect his virtues. I have so often told you to take heed of yourself, that, if you love me, you must think of yourself; we shall require all of our strength in the times in which we live. Oh! do not return, or return as late as possible. Your heart would be too deeply wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my misfortunes—you, who loved me so tenderly. This race of tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself if it knew all the sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never change."
She rejoins the queen.The princess separated from the queen.
The princess, notwithstanding this advice, hastened to join her friend and to share her fate. She stood by the side of the queen during the sleeplessness of the night preceding the 20th of June, and clung to her during all those longand terrific hours in which the mob filled her apartment with language of obscenity, menace, and rage. She accompanied the royal family to the Assembly, shared with them the cheerless night in the old monastery of the Feuillants, and followed them to the gloomy prison of the Temple. The stern decree of the Assembly, depriving the royal family of the presence of any of their friends, excluded the princess from the prison. She still, however, lived but to weep over the sorrows of those whom she so tenderly loved.
She is thrown into prison.Trial of the princess.She refuses to swear.Assassination of the princess.Brutality of the mob.
She was soon arrested as a Loyalist, and plunged, like the vilest criminal, into the prison of La Force. For the crime of loving the king and queen she was summoned to appear before the Revolutionary tribunal. The officers found her lying upon her pallet in the prison, surrounded by other wretched victims of lawless violence, scarcely able to raise her head from her pillow. She entreated them to leave her to die where she was. One of the officers leaned over her bed, and whispered to her that they were her friends, and that her life depended upon her entire compliance with their directions. She immediately arose and accompanied the guard down the prison stairs to the door. There twobrutal-looking wretches, covered with blood, stood waiting to receive her. As they grasped her arms, she fainted. It was long before she recovered. As soon as she revived she was led before the judges. "Swear," said one of them, "that you love liberty and equality; and swear that you hate all kings and queens." "I am willing to swear the first," she replied, "but as to hatred of kings and queens, I can not swear it, for it is not in my heart." Another judge, moved with pity by her youth and innocence, bent over her and whispered, "Swear any thing, or you are lost." She still remained silent. "Well," said one, "you may go, but when you get into the street, shoutVive la nation!" The court-yard was filled with assassins, who cut down, with pikes and bludgeons, the condemned as they were led out from the court, and the mutilated and gory bodies of the slain were strewn over the pavement. Two soldiers took her by the arm to lead her out. As she passed from the door, the dreadful sight froze her heart with terror, and she exclaimed, forgetful of the peril, "O God! how horrible!" One of the soldiers, by a friendly impulse, immediately covered her mouth, with his hand, that her exclamations might not be heard. She was led intothe street, filled with assassins thirsting for the blood of the Royalists, and had advanced but a few steps, when a journeyman barber, staggering with intoxication and infuriated with carnage, endeavored, in a kind of brutal jesting, to strike her cap from her head with his long pike. The blow fell upon her forehead, cutting a deep gash, and the blood gushed out over her face. The assassins around, deeming this the signal for their onset, fell upon her. A blow from a bludgeon laid her dead upon the pavement. One, seizing her by the hair, with a saber cut off her head. Others tore her garments from her graceful limbs, and, cutting her body into fragments, paraded the mutilated remains upon their pikes through the streets. The dissevered head they bore into an ale house, and drank and danced around the ghastly trophy in horrid carousal. The rioting multitude then, in the phrensy of intoxication, swarmed through the streets to the Temple, to torture the king and queen with the dreadful spectacle. The king, hearing the shoutings and tumultuous laughter of the mob, went to the window, and recognized, in the gory head thrust up to him upon the point of a pike, the features of his much-loved friend. He immediately led thequeen to another part of the room, that she might be shielded from the dreadful spectacle.
Dreadful apprehensions.Increased severities.The queen grossly insulted.
Such were the flashes of terror which were ever gleaming through the bars of their windows. The horrors of each passing moment were magnified by the apprehension of still more dreadful evils to come. There was, however, one consolation yet left them. They were permitted to cling together. Locked in each other's arms, they could bow in prayer, and by sympathy and love sustain their fainting hearts. It was soon, however, thought that these indulgences were too great for dethroned royalty to enjoy. But a few days of their captivity had passed away, when, at midnight, they were aroused by an unusual uproar, and a band of brutal soldiers came clattering into their room with lanterns, and, in the most harsh and insulting manner, commanded the immediate expulsion of all the servants and attendants of the royal family. Expostulation and entreaty were alike unavailing. The captives were stripped of all their friends, and passed the remainder of the night in sleeplessness and in despair. With the light of the morning they endeavored to nerve themselves to bear with patience this new trial. The king performed thepart of a nurse in aiding to wash and dress the children. For the health of the children, they went into the court-yard of the prison before dinner for exercise and the fresh air. A soldier, stationed there to guard them, came up deliberately to the queen, and amused his companions by puffing tobacco smoke from his pipe into her face. The parents read upon the walls the names of their children, described as "whelps who ought to be strangled."
The king separated from his family.Wretched state of the king.
Six weeks of this almost unendurable agony passed away, when, one night, as the unhappy captives were clustered together, finding in their mutual and increasing affection a solace for all their woes, six municipal officers entered the tower, and read a decree ordering the entire separation of the king from the rest of his family. No language can express the consternation of the sufferers in view of this cruel measure. Without mercy, the officers immediately executed the barbarous command, by tearing the king from the embraces of his agonized wife and his grief-distracted children. The king, overwhelmed with anguish in view of the sufferings which his wife and children must endure, most earnestly implored them not to separate him from his family. They were inflexibleand, hardly allowing the royal family one moment for their parting adieus, hurried the king away. It was the dark hour of a gloomy night. The few rays of light from the lanterns guided them through narrow passages, and over piles of rubbish to a distant angle of the huge and dilapidated fortress, where they thrust the king into an unfurnished cell, and, locking the door upon him, they left him with one tallow candle to make visible the gloom and the solitude. There was, in one corner, a miserable pallet, and heaps of moldering bricks and mortar were scattered over the damp floor. The king threw himself, in utter despair, upon this wretched bed, and counted, till the morning dawned, the steps of the sentinel pacing to and fro before his door. At length a small piece of bread and a bottle of water were brought him for his breakfast.
The queen's anguish at the separation.The king sees his family occasionally.
The anguish of the queen in the endurance of this most cruel separation was apparently as deep as human nature could experience. Her woe amounted to delirium. Pale and haggard, she walked to and fro, beseeching her jailers that they would restore to her and to her children the husband and the father. Her pathetic entreaties touched even their hearts of stone. "I do believe," said one of them, "that theseinfernal women will make even me weep." After some time, they consented that the king should occasionally be permitted to partake his meals with his family, a guard being always present to hear what they should say. Immediately after the meal, he was to be taken back to his solitary imprisonment.
Condition of the captives.
Such was the condition of the royal family during a period of about four months, varied by the capricious mercy or cruelty of the different persons who were placed as guards over them. Their clothes became soiled, threadbare, and tattered; and they were deprived of all means of repairing their garments, lest they should convert needles and scissors into instruments of suicide. The king was not allowed the use of a razor to remove his beard; and the luxury of a barber to perform that essential part of his toilet was an expense which his foes could not incur. It was the studied endeavor of those who now rode upon the crested yet perilous billows of power, to degrade royalty to the lowest depths of debasement and contempt—that the beheading of the king and the queen might be regarded as merely the execution of a male and a female felon dragged from the loathsome dungeons of crime.
1792-1793
Ominous preparations.The king summoned before the Convention.The king before the Convention.Charges brought against him.
Onthe 11th of December, 1792, just four months after the royal family had been consigned to the Temple, as the captives were taking their breakfast, a great noise of the rolling of drums, the neighing of horses, and the tramp of a numerous multitude was heard around the prison walls; soon some one entered, and informed the king that these were the preparations which were making to escort him to his trial. The king knew perfectly well that this was the step which preceded his execution, and, as he thought of the awful situation of his family, he threw himself into his chair and buried his face in his hands, and for two hours remained in that attitude immovable. He was roused from his painful revery by the entrance of the officers to conduct him to the bar of his judges, from whom he was aware he could expect no mercy. "I follow you," said the king, "not in obedience to the orders of the Convention, but because my enemies are the more powerful." He put on his brown great-coat andhat, and, silently descending the stairs to the door of the tower, entered a carriage which was there awaiting him. As he had long been deprived of his razors, his chin and cheeks were covered with masses of hair. His garments hung loosely around his emaciated frame, and all dignity of aspect was lost in the degraded condition to which designing cruelty had reduced him. The captive monarch was escorted through the streets by regiments of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, every man furnished with fifteen rounds of ammunition to repel any attempts at a rescue. A countless throng of people lined the streets through which the illustrious prisoner was conveyed. The multitude gazed upon the melancholy procession in profound silence. He soon stood before the bar of the Convention. "Louis," said the president, "the French nation accuses you. You are about to hear the charges which are to be preferred. Louis, be seated." The king listened with perfect tranquillity and self-possession to a long catalogue of accusations, in which his efforts to sustain the falling monarchy, and his exertions to protect himself and family from insults and death, were construed into crimes against the nation.
The king begs for a morsel of bread.He is taken back to prison.
The examination of the king was long, minute, and was conducted by those who were impatient for his blood. At its close, the king, perfectly exhausted by mental excitement and the want of refreshment, was led back into the waiting-room of the Convention. He was scarcely able to stand for faintness. He saw a soldier eating a piece of bread. He approached, and, in a whisper, begged him for a piece, and ate it. Here was the monarch of thirty millions of people, in the heart of his proud capital, and with all his palaces around him, actually begging bread of a poor soldier. The king was again placed in the carriage, and conveyed back to his prison in the Temple. As the cortège passed slowly by the palace of the Tuileries, the scene of all his former grandeur and happiness, the king gazed long and sadly on the majestic pile, so lost in thought that he heeded not, and apparently heard not the insulting cries which were resounding around him. As the king entered the Temple, he raised his eyes most wistfully to the queen's apartment, but the windows were so barred that no glances could be interchanged. The king was conducted to his apartment, and was informed that he could no longer be permitted to hold any communication whateverwith the other members of his family. He contrived, however, by means of a tangle of thread, in which was inclosed a piece of paper, perforated by a needle, to get a note to the queen, and to receive a few words in return. He, however, felt that his doom was sealed, and began from that hour to look forward to his immortality. He made his will, in which he spoke in most affecting terms of his wife, and his children, and his enemies, commending them all to the protection of God.
Advance of the allies.Clamor for the king's life.
An indescribable gloom now reigned throughout Paris. The allied armies on the frontiers were gradually advancing. The French troops were defeated. It was feared that the Royalists would rise, and join the invaders, and rescue the king. Desperadoes rioted through the streets, clamoring for the blood of their monarch. With knives and bludgeons they surrounded the Convention, threatening the lives of all if they did not consign the king to the guillotine. The day for the final decision came—Shall the king live or die? On that day the heart of the metropolis throbbed as never before. It was the 20th of January, 1793. The Convention had already been in uninterrupted session for fifteen hours. The clamor of the tumultuous and threateningmob gave portentous warning of the doom which awaited the members of the Assembly should they dare to spare the life of the king. One by one the deputies mounted the tribune as their names were called in alphabetical order, and gave their vote. For some time death and exile seemed equally balanced. The results of the vote were read. The Convention comprised seven hundred and twenty-one voters, three hundred and thirty-four of whom voted for exile, and three hundred and eighty-seven for death.