The king condemned to death.Emotion of Malesherbes.The king's demands.The Abbé Edgeworth.
Louis sat alone in his prison, calmly awaiting the decision. He laid down that night knowing that his doom was sealed, and yet not knowing what that doom was. Malesherbes, the venerable friend who had volunteered for his defense, came to communicate the mournful tidings. He fell at the king's feet so overcome with emotion that he could not speak. The king understood the language of his silence and his tears, and uttered himself the sentence "Death." But a few moments elapsed before the officers of the Convention came, in all the pomp and parade of the land, to communicate to the king his doom to the guillotine in twenty-four hours. With perfect calmness, and fixing his eye immovably upon his judges he heard thereading of the sentence. The reading concluded, the king presented a paper to the deputies, which he first read to them in the clear and commanding tones of a monarch upon his throne, demanding a respite of three days, in order to prepare to appear before God; also permission to see his family, and to converse with a priest. The Convention, angry at these requests, informed the king that he might see any priest he pleased, and that he might see his family, but that the execution must take place in twenty-four hours from the time of the sentence. Darkness had again fallen upon the city, when the minister of religion, M. Edgeworth, was led through the gloomy streets, to administer the consolations of piety to the condemned monarch. As he entered the apartment of the king, he fell at his feet and burst into tears. Louis for a moment wept, when, recovering himself, he said, "Pardon me this momentary weakness. I have so long lived among enemies, that habit has rendered me insensible to hatred. The sight of a faithful friend restores my sensibility, and moves me to tears in spite of myself." A long conversation ensued, in which the king inquired, with the greatest interest, respecting the fate of his numerous friends. He read his willwith the utmost deliberation, his voice faltering only when he alluded to his wife, children, and sister. At seven o'clock he was to have his last agonizing interview with his beloved family, and the thought of this agitated him far more than the prospect of the scaffold.
The last interview.Anguish of the royal family.
The hour for the last sad meeting arrived. The king, having prepared his heart by prayer for the occasion, descended into a small unfurnished room, where he was to meet his family. The door opened. The queen, leading his son, and Madame Elizabeth, leading his daughter, with trembling, fainting steps, entered the room. Not a word was uttered. The king threw himself upon a bench, drew the queen to his right side, his sister to the left, and their arms encircled his neck, and their heads hung upon his breast. The son climbed upon his father's knee, clinging with his arms frantically to his bosom; and the daughter, throwing herself at his feet, buried her head in his lap, her beautiful hair, in disordered ringlets, falling over her shoulders. A long half hour thus passed, in which not one single articulate word was spoken, but the anguish of these united hearts was expressed in cries and lamentations which pierced through the stone walls of their prison, andwere heard by passers by in the streets. But human nature could not long endure this intensity of agony. Total exhaustion ensued. Their tears dried upon their cheeks; embraces, kisses, whispers of tenderness and love, and woe ensued, which lasted for two hours.
The last embrace.The separation.
The king then clasped them each in a long embrace, pressing his lips to their cheeks, and prepared to retire. Clinging to each other in an inseparable group, they approached the stair-case which the king was to ascend, when their piercing, heart-rending cries were renewed. The king, summoning all his fortitude to his aid, tore himself from them, and, in most tender accents, cried "Adieu! adieu!" hastily ascended the stairs and disappeared, having partially promised that he would see them again in the morning. The princess royal fell fainting upon the floor, and was borne insensible to her room. The king, reaching his apartment, threw himself into a chair, and exclaimed, "What an interview I have had! Why do I love so fondly? Alas! why am I so fondly loved? But we have now done with time, let us occupy ourselves with eternity."
The king receives the sacrament.Mementoes to his family.The king summoned to execution.Brutality of the officers.The brutal jailer.
The hour of midnight had now arrived. The king threw himself upon his bed, and slept ascalmly, as peacefully, as though he had never known a sorrow. At five o'clock he was awakened, and received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Then, taking a small parcel from his bosom, and removing his wedding ring from his finger, he said to an attendant, "After my death, I wish you to give this seal to my son, this ring to the queen. Say to the queen, my dear children, and my sister, that I had promised to see them this morning, but that I desired to spare them the agony of this bitter separation twice over. How much it has cost me to part without receiving their last embraces!" Here his utterance was impeded by sobs. He then called for some scissors, that he might cut off locks of hair for his family. As he soon after stood by the stove, warming himself, he exclaimed, "How happy am I that I maintained my Christian faith while on the throne! What would have been my condition now, were it not for this hope!" Soon faint gleams of the light of day began to penetrate through the iron bars and planks which guarded his windows. It was the signal for the beating of drums, the tramp of armed men, the rolling of heavy carriages of artillery, and the clattering of horses' hoofs. As the escort were arriving at their stations in thecourt-yard of the Temple, a great noise was heard upon the stair-case. "They have come for me," said the king; and, rising with perfect calmness and without a tremor, he opened the door. It was a false summons. Again and again, under various pretexts, the door was opened, until nine o'clock, when a tumultuous noise upon the stair-case announced the approach of a body of armed men. Twelve municipal officers and twelve soldiers entered the apartment. The soldiers formed in two lines. The king, with a serene air, placed himself between the double lines, and, looking to one of the municipal officers, said, presenting to him a roll of paper, which was his last will and testament, "I beg of you to transmit this paper to the queen." The municipal brutally replied, "That is no affair of mine. I am here to conduct you to the scaffold." "True," the king replied, and gave the paper to another, who received it. The king then, taking his hat and declining his coat, notwithstanding the severity of the cold, said, with a dignified gesture and a tone of command, "Let us go." The king led the way, followed rather than conducted by his escort. Descending the stairs, he met the turnkey, who had been disrespectful to him thenight before, and whom the king had reproached for his insolence. Louis immediately approached the unfeeling jailer, and said to him, "Mathey, I was somewhat warm with you yesterday; forgive me, for the sake of this hour." The imbruted monster turned upon his heel without any reply.
The king conducted to execution.A sad procession.Admirable calmness of the king.Attempt to rescue the king.Its failure.
As he crossed the court-yard of the Temple, he anxiously gazed upon the windows of the apartment where the queen, his sister, and his children were imprisoned. The windows were so guarded by plank shutters that no glances from the loved ones within could meet his eye. As the heart of the king dwelt upon the scenes of anguish which he knew must be passing there, it seemed for a moment that his fortitude would fail him. But, with a violent effort, he recovered his composure and passed on. At the entrance of the Temple a carriage awaited the king. Two soldiers entered the carriage, and took seats by his side. The king's confessor also rode in the carriage. It was the 21st of January, 1793, a gloomy winter's day. Dark clouds lowered in the sky. Fog and smoke darkened the city. The atmosphere was raw, and cold in the extreme. Nature seemed in harmony with man's deed ofcruelty and crime. The shops were all closed, the markets were empty. No citizens were allowed to cross the streets on the line of march, or even to show themselves at the windows. Sixty drums kept up a deafening clamor as the vast procession of cavalry, infantry, and artillery marched before, behind, and on each side of the carriage. Cannon, loaded with grape-shot, with matches lighted, guarded the main street on the line of march, to prevent the possibility of an attempt even at rescue. The noise of the drums, the clatter of the iron hoofs of the horses, and the rumbling of the heavy pieces of artillery over the pavements prevented all discourse, and the king, leaning back in his carriage, surrendered himself to such reflections as the awful hour would naturally suggest. The perfect calmness of the king excited the admiration of those who were near his person, and a few hearts in the multitude, touched with pity, gave utterance to the cry of "Pardon! pardon!" The sounds, however, died away in the throng, awakening no sympathetic response. As the procession moved along, no sound proceeded from human lips. A feeling of awe appeared to have taken possession of the whole city. The sentiment of loyalty had, for so many centuries,pervaded the bosoms of the French people, that they could not conduct their monarch to the scaffold without the deepest emotions of awe. A feeling of consternation oppressed every heart in view of the deed now to be perpetrated. But it was too late to retract. Perhaps there was not an individual in that vast throng who did not shudder in view of the crime of that day. At one spot on the line of march, seven or eight young men, in the spirit of desperate heroism which the occasion excited, hoping that the pity of the multitude would cause them to rally for their aid, broke through the line, sword in hand, and, rushing toward the carriage, shouted, "Help for those who would save the king." Three thousand young men had enrolled themselves in the conspiracy to respond to this call. But the preparations to resist such an attempt were too formidable to allow of any hopes of success. The few who heroically made the movement were instantly cut down. At the Place de la Revolution, one hundred thousand people were gathered in silence around the scaffold. The instrument of death, with its blood-red beams and posts, stood prominent above the multitudinous assemblage in the damp, murky air.
The guillotine.Associations.
The guillotine was erected in the center of the Place de la Revolution, directly in the front of the garden of the Tuileries. This celebrated instrument of death was invented in Italy by a physician named Guillotin, and from him received its name. A heavy ax, raised by machinery between two upright posts, by the touching of a spring fell, gliding down between two grooves, and severed the head from the body with the rapidity of lightning. The palace in which Louis had passed the hours of his infancy, and his childhood, and the days of his early grandeur; the magnificent gardens of the palace, where he had so often been greeted with acclamations; the spacious Elysian Fields, the pride of Paris, were all spread around, as if in mockery of the sacrifice which was there to be offered. This whole space was crowded with a countless multitude, clustered upon the house tops, darkening the windows, swinging upon the trees, to witness the tragic spectacle of the beheading of their king. Arrangements had been made to have the places immediately around the scaffold filled by the unrelenting foes of the monarch, that no emotions of pity might retard the bloody catastrophe. As the carriage approached the place of execution, the hum ofthe mighty multitude was hushed, and a silence, as of death, pervaded the immense throng.
The king's thoughtfulness.He undresses himself.The king ascends the scaffold.His speech.
At last the carriage stopped at the foot of the scaffold. The king raised his eyes, and said to his confessor, in a low but calm tone, "We have arrived, I think." By a silent gesture the confessor assented. The king, ever more mindful of others than of himself, placed his hand upon the knee of the confessor, and said to the officers and executioners who were crowded around the coach, "Gentlemen, I recommend to your protection this gentleman. See that he be not insulted after my death. I charge you to watch over him." As no one made any reply, the king repeated the admonition in tones still more earnest. "Yes! yes!" interrupted one, jeeringly, "make your mind easy about that; we will take care of him. Let us alone for that." Three of the executioners then approached the king to undress him. He waved them from him with an authoritative gesture, and himself took off his coat, his cravat, and turned down his shirt collar. The executioners then came with cords to bind him to a plank. "What do you intend to do?" he exclaimed, indignantly. "We intend to bind you," they replied, as they seized his hands. To be bound was an unexpectedindignity, at which the blood of the monarch recoiled. "No! no!" he exclaimed, "I will never submit to that. Do your business, but you shall not bind me." The king resisted. The executioners called for help. A scene of violence was about to ensue. The king turned his eye to his confessor, as if for counsel. "Sire," said the Abbé Edgeworth, "submit unresistingly to this fresh outrage, as the last resemblance to the Savior who is about to recompense your sufferings." Louis raised his eyes to heaven, and said, "Assuredly there needed nothing less than the example of the Savior to induce me to submit to such an indignity." He then reached his hands out to the executioners, and said, "Do as you will; I will drink the cup to the dregs." Leaning upon the arm of his friend, he ascended the steep and slippery steps of the guillotine; then, walking across the platform firmly, he looked for a moment intently upon the sharp blade of the ax, and turning suddenly to the populace, exclaimed, in a voice clear and distinct, which penetrated to the remotest extremities of the square, "People, I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge. I pardon the authors of my death, and pray God that the blood you are about to shed may neverfall again upon France. And you, unhappy people—" Here the drums were ordered to beat, and the deafening clamor drowned his words. The king turned slowly to the guillotine and surrendered himself to the executioners. He was bound to the plank. "The plank sunk. The blade glided. The head fell."
The last act in the tragedy.Burial of the king's body.
One of the executioners seized the severed head of the monarch by the hair, and, raising the bloody trophy of their triumph, showed it to the shuddering throng, while the blood dripped from it on the scaffold. A few desperadoes dipped their sabers and the points of their pikes in the blood, and, waving them in the air, shouted "Vive la Republique!" The multitude, however, responded not to the cry. Explosions of artillery announced to the distant parts of the city that the sacrifice was consummated. The remains of the monarch were conveyed on a covered cart to the cemetery of the Madeleine, and lime was thrown into the grave that the body might be speedily and entirely consumed.
The blood-red obelisk.Character of Louis.
Over the grave where he was buried Napoleon subsequently began the splendid Temple of Glory, in commemoration of the monarch and other victims who fell in the Revolution.The completion of the edifice was frustrated by the fall of Napoleon. The Bourbons, however, on their restoration to the throne, finished the building, and it is now called the Church of the Madeleine, and it constitutes one of the most beautiful structures of Paris. The spot on which the monarch fell is now marked by a colossal obelisk of blood-red granite, which the French government, in 1833, transported from Thebes, in Upper Egypt. Louis was unquestionably one of the most conscientious and upright sovereigns who ever sat upon a throne. He loved his people, and earnestly desired to do every thing in his power to promote their welfare. And it can hardly be doubted that he was guided through life, and sustained through the awful trial of his death, by the principle of sincere piety. The tidings of his execution sent a thrill of horror through Europe, and fastened such a stigma upon Republicanism as to pave the way for the re-erection of the throne.
1793
Sufferings of the queen.Announcement of her husband's death.
Whilethe king was suffering upon the guillotine, the queen, with Madame Elizabeth and the children, remained in their prison, in the endurance of anguish as severe as could be laid upon human hearts. The queen was plunged into a continued succession of swoons, and when she heard the booming of the artillery, which announced that the fatal ax had fallen and that her husband was headless, her companions feared that her life was also, at the same moment, to be extinguished. Soon the rumbling of wheels, the rolling of heavy pieces of cannon, and the shouts of the multitude penetrating through the bars of her cell, proclaimed the return of the procession from the scene of death. The queen was extremely anxious to be informed of all the details of the last moments of the king, but her foes refused her even this consolation.
Cruel decree.Maria's defense of her boy.The dauphin's cell.
Days and nights now lingered slowly alongwhile the captives were perishing in monotonous misery. The severity of their imprisonment was continually increased by new deprivations. No communications from the world without were permitted to reach their ears. Shutters were so arranged that even the sky was scarcely visible, and no employment whatever was allowed them to beguile their hours of woe. About four months after the death of the king, a loud noise was heard one night at the door of their chamber, and a band of armed men came tumultuously in, and read to the queen an order that her little son should be entirely separated from her, and imprisoned by himself. The poor child, as he heard this cruel decree, was frantic with terror, and, throwing himself into his mother's arms, shrieked out, "O mother! mother! mother! do not abandon me to those men. They will kill me as they did papa." The queen was thrown into a perfect delirium of mental agony. She placed her child upon the bed, and, stationing herself before him, with eyes glaring like a tigress, and with almost superhuman energy, declared that they should tear her in pieces before they should touch her poor boy. The officers were subdued by this affecting exhibition of maternal love, and forbore violence.For two hours she thus contended against all their solicitations, until, entirely overcome by exhaustion, she fell in a swoon upon the floor. The child was then hurried from the apartment, and placed under the care of a brutal wretch, whose name, Simon, inhumanity has immortalized. The unhappy child threw himself upon the floor of his cell, and for two days remained without any nourishment. The queen abandoned herself to utter despair. Madame Elizabeth and Maria Theresa performed all the service of the chamber, making the beds, sweeping the room, and attending upon the queen. No importunities on the part of Maria Antoinette could obtain for her the favor of a single interview with her child.
The queen summoned to the Conciergerie.Painful partings.
Three more months passed slowly away, when, early in August, the queen was aroused from her sleep at midnight by armed men, with lanterns, bursting into her room. With unfeeling barbarity, they ordered her to accompany them to the prison of the Conciergerie, the most dismal prison in Paris, where those doomed to die awaited their execution. The queen listened, unmoved, to the order, for her heart had now become callous even to woe. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at thefeet of the officers, and most pathetically, but unavailingly, implored them not to deprive them of their only remaining solace. The queen was compelled to rise and dress in the presence of the wretches who exulted over her abasement. She clasped her daughter for one frantic moment convulsively to her heart, covered her with embraces and kisses, spoke a few words of impassioned tenderness to her sister, and then, as if striving by violence to throw herself from the room, she inadvertently struck her forehead a severe blow against the low portal of the door. "Did you hurt you?" inquired one of the men. "Oh no!" was the despairing reply, "nothing now can further harm me."
The Conciergerie.Loathsome apartments of the queen.
A few lights glimmered dimly from the street lamps as the queen entered the carriage, guarded by soldiers, and was conveyed through the somber streets to her last earthly abode. The prison of the Conciergerie consists of a series of subterranean dungeons beneath the floor of the Palais de Justice. More damp, dark, gloomy dens of stone and iron the imagination can not conceive. Down the dripping and slippery steps she was led, groping her way by the feeble light of a tallow candle, until she approached, through a labyrinth of corridors, an iron door. Itgrated upon its hinges, and she was thrust in, two soldiers accompanying her, and the door was closed. It was midnight. The lantern gave just light enough to show her the horrors of her cell. The floor was covered with mud and water, while little streams trickled down the stone walls. A miserable pallet in one corner, an old pine table and one chair, were all the comforts the kingdom of France could afford its queen.
Maria Antoinette in the Conciergerie.Maria Antoinette in the Conciergerie.
The jailer's wife.The jailer's daughter.The garter.
The heart of the wife of the jailer was touched with compassion in view of this unmitigated misery. She did not dare to speak words of kindness, for they would be reported by the guard. She, however, prepared for her some food, ventured to loan her some needles, and a ball of worsted, and communicated intelligence of her daughter and son. The Committee of Public Safety heard of these acts of mercy, and the jailer and his wife were immediately arrested, and plunged into those dungeons into which they would have allowed the spirit of humanity to enter. The shoes of the queen, saturated with water, soon fell from her feet. Her stockings and her dress, from the humidity of the air, were in tatters. Two soldiers, with drawn swords, were stationed by her side nightand day, with the command never, even for one moment, to turn their eyes from her. The daughter of the new jailer, touched with compassion, and regardless of the fate of the predecessors of her parents, entered her cell every morning to dress her whitened locks, which sorrow had bleached. The queen ventured one day to solicit an additional counterpane for her bed. "How dare you make such a request?" replied the solicitor general of the commune; "you deserve to be sent to the guillotine!" The queen succeeded secretly, by means of a tooth-pick, which she converted into a tapestry needle, in plaiting a garter from thread which she plucked from an old woollen coverlet. This memorial of a mother's love she contrived, by stratagem, to transmit to her daughter. This was the richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the Queen of France could bequeath to her child. That garter is still preserved as a sacred relic by those who revere the memory and commiserate the misfortunes of Maria Antoinette.
Dignity of the queen during her trial.She is condemned to death.
Two months of this all but insupportable imprisonment passed away, when, early in October, she was brought from her dungeon below to the court-room above for her trial. Her accusationwas that she abhorred the revolution which had beheaded her husband, and plunged her and her whole family into woes, the remembrance of which it would seem that even eternity could hardly efface. The queen condescended to no defense. She appeared before her accusers in the calm dignity of despair, and yet with a spirit as unbroken and queenly as when she moved in the gilded saloons of Versailles. The queen was called to hear her sentence. It was death within twenty-four hours. Not the tremor of a muscle showed the slightest agitation as the mob, with clappings and shoutings, manifested their hatred for their victim, and their exultation at her doom. Insults and execrations followed her to the stair-case as she descended again to her dungeon. It was four o'clock in the morning. A few rays of the dawning day struggled through the bars of her prison window, and she seemed to smile with a faint expression of pleasure at the thought that her last day of earthly woe had dawned. She called for pen and ink, and wrote a very affecting letter to her sister and children. Having finished the letter, she repeatedly and passionately kissed it, as if it were the last link which bound her to the loved ones from whom she was sosoon to be separated by death. She then, as if done with earth, kneeled down and prayed, and with a tranquillized spirit, threw herself upon her bed, and fell into a profound slumber.
The queen dressed for the guillotine.Her hands bound.Car of the condemned.Indignities heaped upon the queen.Arrival at the guillotine.The queen's composure.The queen's prayer.Maternal love.The last adieu.
An hour or two passed away, when the kind daughter of the jailer came, with weeping eyes and a throbbing heart, into the cell to dress the queen for the guillotine. It was the 14th of October, 1793. Maria Antoinette arose with alacrity, and, laying aside her prison-worn garments of mourning, put on her only remaining dress, a white robe, emblematic of the joy with which she bade adieu to earth. A white handkerchief was spread over her shoulders, and a white cap, bound to her head by a black ribbon, covered her hair. It was a cold and foggy morning, and the moaning wind drove clouds of mist through the streets. But the day had hardly dawned before crowds of people thronged the prison, and all Paris seemed in motion to enjoy the spectacle of the sufferings of their queen. At eleven o'clock the executioners entered her cell, bound her hands behind her, and led her out from the prison. The queen had nerved her heart to die in the spirit of defiance to her foes. She thought, perhaps, too much of man, too little of God. Queenly pride rather than Christianresignation inspired her soul. Expecting to be conducted to the scaffold, as the king had been, in a close carriage, she, for a moment, recoiled with horror when she was led to the ignominious car of the condemned, and was commanded to enter it. This car was much like a common hay cart, entirely open, and guarded by a rude but strong railing. The female furies who surrounded her shouted with laughter, and cried out incessantly, "Down with the Austrian!" "Down with the Austrian!" The queen was alone in the cart. Her hands were tied behind her. She could not sit down. She could not support herself against the jolting of the cart upon the rough pavement. The car started. The queen was thrown from her equilibrium. She fell this way and that way. Her bonnet was crowded over her eyes. Her gray locks floated in the damp morning air. Her coarse dress, disarranged, excited derision. As she was violently pitched to and fro, notwithstanding her desperate endeavors to retain the dignity of her appearance, the wretches shouted, "These are not your cushions of Trianon." It was a long ride, through the infuriated mob, to the scaffold, which was reared directly in front of the garden of the Tuileries.As the car arrived at the entrance of the gardens of the palace where Maria had passed through so many vicissitudes of joy and woe, it stopped for a moment, apparently that the queen might experience a few more emotions of torture as she contemplated the abode of her past grandeur. Maria leaned back upon the railing, utterly regardless of the clamor around her, and fixed her eyes long and steadfastly upon the theater of all her former happiness. The thought of her husband, her children, her home, for a moment overcame her, and a few tears trickled down her cheeks and fell upon the floor of the cart. But, instantly regaining her composure, she looked around again upon the multitude, waving like an ocean over the whole amphitheater, with an air of majesty expressive of her superiority over all earthly ills. A few turns more of the wheels brought her to the foot of the guillotine. It was upon the same spot where her husband had fallen. She calmly, firmly looked at the dreadful instrument of death, scrutinizing all its arrangements, and contemplating, almost with an air of satisfaction, the sharp and glittering knife, which was so soon to terminate all her earthly sufferings. Two of the executioners assisted her by the elbowsas she endeavored to descend from the cart. She waited for no directions, but with a firm and yet not hurried tread, ascended the steps of the scaffold. By accident, she trod upon the foot of one of the executioners. "Pardon me!" she exclaimed, with all the affability and grace with which she would have apologized to a courtier in the midst of the social festivities of the Little Trianon. She kneeled down, raised her eyes to heaven, and in a low but heart-rending prayer, all forgetful of herself, implored God to protect her sister and her helpless children. She was deaf to the clamor of the infuriate mob around her. She was insensible to the dishonor of her own appearance, with disheveled locks blinding her eyes, and with her faded garments crumpled and disarranged by the rough jostling of the cart. She forgot the scaffold on which she stood, the cords which bound her hands, the blood-thirsty executioners by her side, the fatal knife gleaming above her head. Her thoughts, true to the irrepressible instincts of maternal love, wandered back to the dungeons from whence she had emerged, and lingered with anguish around the pallets where her orphan, friendless, persecuted children were entombed. Her last prayer was the prayer of agony. She rose from her knees, and, turningher eyes toward the tower of the Temple, and speaking in tones which would have pierced any hearts but those which surrounded her, exclaimed, "Adieu! adieu! once again, my dear children. I go to rejoin your father."
End of the tragedy.
She was bound to the plank. Slowly it descended till the neck of the queen was brought under the groove down which the fatal ax was to glide. The executioner, hardened by deeds of daily butchery, could not look upon this spectacle of the misery of the Queen of France unmoved. His hand trembled as he endeavored to disengage the ax, and there was a moment's delay. The ax fell. The dissevered head dropped into the basket placed to receive it. The executioner seized it by the hair, gushing with blood, raised it high above his head, and walked around the elevated platform of the guillotine, exhibiting the bloody trophy to the assembled multitude. One long shout of "Vive la Republique!" rent the air, and the long and dreadful tragedy of the life of Maria Antoinette was closed.
The remains of the queen were thrown into a pine coffin and hurried to an obscure burial. Upon the records of the Church of La Madeleine we now read the charge, "For the coffin of the Widow Capet, seven francs."
1793-1795
The dauphin and the princesses.Painful uncertainty.Sufferings of the princesses.Their dismal cell.Painful thoughts.
WhenMaria Antoinette was taken from the Temple and consigned to the dungeons of the Conciergerie, there to await her trial for her life, the dauphin was imprisoned by himself, though but a child seven years of age, in a gloomy cell, where he was entirely excluded from any communication with his aunt and sister. The two latter princesses remained in the room from which the queen had been taken. They were, however, in the most painful uncertainty respecting her fate. Their jailers were commanded to give them no information whatever respecting the external world. Their prison was a living tomb, in which they were allowed to breathe, and that was all. The Princess Elizabeth had surmised, from various little incidents, what had been the fate of the queen, but she tried to cheer the young, and affectionate, and still beautiful child with the hope that her mother yet lived, and that theymight meet again. Eight months of the most dreary captivity rolled slowly away. It was winter, and yet they were allowed no fire to dispel the gloom and the chill of their cell. They were deprived of all books. They were not allowed the use of pens or paper. The long winter nights came. In their cell there was but a few hours during which the rays of the sun struggled faintly through the barred windows. Night, long, dismal, impenetrable, like that of Egypt, enveloped them for fifteen hours. They counted the strokes of the clocks in the distant churches. They listened to the hum of the vast and mighty metropolis, like the roar of the surf upon the shore. Reflections full of horror crowded upon them. The king was beheaded. The queen was, they knew not where, either dead or in the endurance of the most fearful sufferings. The young dauphin was imprisoned by himself, and they knew only that the gentle, affectionate, idolized child was exposed to every cruelty which barbarism could inflict upon him. What was to be their own fate? Were they to linger out the remnant of their days in this wretched captivity? Would their inhuman jailers envy them the consolation they found in each other's arms, and separate them? Werethey also to perish upon the guillotine, where nearly all whom they had loved had already perished? Were they ever to be released? If so, what joy could there remain on earth for them after their awful sufferings and bereavements? Woes, such as they had endured, were too deep ever to be effaced from the mind. Nearly eight months thus lingered slowly along, in which they saw only brutal and insulting jailers, ate the coarsest food, and were clothed in the unwashed and tattered garb of the prison. Time seemed to have stopped its flight, and to have changed into a weary, woeful eternity.
Unwelcome visitors.The princesses separated.Brutality of the soldiers.Elizabeth taken before the tribunal.
On the 9th of May, the Princess Elizabeth and her niece, who had received the name of Maria Theresa in memory of her grandmother, were retiring to bed. They were enveloped in midnight darkness. With their arms around each other's necks, they were kneeling at the foot of the bed in prayer. Suddenly a great noise was heard at the door, accompanied with repeated and violent blows, almost heavy enough to shiver the door from its hinges. Madame Elizabeth hastened to withdraw a bolt, which constituted an inner fastening, when some soldiers rushed in with their lanterns, and said to Madame Elizabeth, "You must immediatelyfollow us." "And my niece," replied the princess, ever forgetful of herself in her thoughtfulness for others, "can she go too?" "We want you only now!" was the answer; "we will take care of her by-and-by." The aunt foresaw that the hour for the long-dreaded separation had come. She threw her arms around the neck of the trembling maiden, and wept in uncontrollable grief. The brutal soldiers, unmoved by these tears, loaded them both with reproaches and insults, as belonging to the detested race of kings, and imperiously commanded the Princess Elizabeth immediately to depart. She endeavored to whisper a word of hope into the ear of her despairing niece. "I shall probably soon return again, my dear Maria." "No, citoyenne, you won't," rudely interrupted one of the jailers; "you will never ascend these stairs again. So take your bonnet and come down." Bathing the face of the young girl with her tears, invoking the blessing of heaven upon her, turning again and again to enfold her in a last embrace, she was led out by the soldiers, and conducted down the dark and damp stairs to the gate. Here the soldiers rudely searched her person anew, and then thrust her into a carriage. It was midnight. The carriage wasdriven violently through the deserted streets to the Conciergerie. The Tribunal was, even at that hour, in session, for in those days of blood, when the slide of the guillotine had no repose from morning till night, the day did not contain hours enough for the work of condemnation. The princess was conducted immediately into the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A few questions were asked her, and then she was led into a hall, and left to catch such repose as she could upon the bench where Maria Antoinette but a few months before had awaited her condemnation.
A group of noble captives.
The morning had hardly dawned when she was again conducted to the Tribunal, in company with twenty-four others, of every age and of both sexes, whose crime was that they were nobles. Ladies were there, illustrious in virtue and rank, who had formerly graced the brilliant assemblies of the Tuileries and of Versailles. Young men, whose family names had been renowned for ages, stood there to answer for the crime of possessing a distinguished name. While looking upon this group of nobles, gathered before that merciless tribunal, where judgment was almost certain condemnation, the public accuser, with cruel irony remarked, "Ofwhat can Madame Elizabeth complain, when she sees herself at the foot of the guillotine, surrounded by her faithful nobility? She can now fancy herself back again in the gay festivities of Versailles."
Trial of Madame Elizabeth.Her condemnation.Sad reverses.Character of Madame Elizabeth.
The charges against Elizabeth were, that she was the sister of a tyrant, and that she loved that royal family whom the nation had adjudged not fit to live. "If my brother had been the tyrant you declare him to have been," the princess remarked, "you would not be where you now are, nor I before you." But it is vain for the lamb to plead with the wolf. She was condemned to die. She listened to her sentence with the most perfect composure, and almost with satisfaction. The only favor she asked was, that she might see a priest, and receive the consolations of religion, according to the faith she professed. Even this request was denied her. The crime of loyalty was of too deep a dye to allow of any, the slightest, mitigation of punishment. From the judgment hall she was led down into one of the dungeons of the Conciergerie, where, with the rest of her companions, she awaited the execution of their doom. It was, indeed, a melancholy meeting. These illustrious captives had formerly dwelt in thehighest splendor which earth allows. They had met in regal palaces, surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur of courts. Now, after months of the most cruel imprisonment, after passing through scenes of the most protracted woe, having been deprived of all their possessions, of all their ancestral honors, having surrendered one after another of those most dear to them to the guillotine, they were collected in a dark and foul dungeon, cold and wet, hungry and exhausted, to be conveyed in a few hours, in the cart of the condemned, to the scaffold. The character of Elizabeth was such, her weanedness from the world, her mild and heavenly spirit, as to have secured almost the idolatrous veneration of those who knew her. The companions of her misfortunes now clustered around her, as the one to whom they must look for support and strength in this awful hour. The princess, more calm and peaceful even than when surrounded by all the splendors of royalty, looked forward joyfully to the guillotine as the couch of sweet and lasting repose. Faith enabled her to leave the children, now the only tie which bound her to earth, in the hands of God, and, conscious that she had done with all things earthly, her thoughts were directed to thosemansions of rest which, she doubted not, were in reserve for her. She bowed her head with a smile to the executioner as he cut off her long tresses in preparation for the knife. The locks fell at her feet, and even the executioners divided them among them as memorials of her loveliness and virtue.
Madame Elizabeth at the guillotine.
Her hands were bound behind her, and she was placed in the cart with twenty-two companions of noble birth, and she was doomed to wait at the foot of the scaffold till all those heads had fallen, before her turn could come. The youth, the beauty, the innocence, the spotless life of the princess seemed to disarm the populace of their rage, and they gazed upon her in silence and almost with admiration. Her name had ever been connected with every thing that was pure and kind. And even a feeling of remorse seemed to pervade the concourse surrounding the scaffold in view of the sacrifice of so blameless a victim.
Execution of her companions.Death of Madame Elizabeth.Her faith and piety.
One by one, as the condemned ascended the steps of the guillotine to submit to the dreadful execution, they approached Elizabeth and encircled her in an affectionate embrace. At last every head had fallen beneath the ax but that of Elizabeth. The mutilated bodies were beforeher. The gory heads of those she loved were in a pile by her side. It was a sight to shock the stoutest nerves. But the princess, sustained by that Christian faith which had supported her through her almost unparalleled woes, apparently without a tremor ascended the steps, looked calmly and benignantly around upon the vast multitude, as if in her heart she was imploring God's blessing upon them, and surrendered herself to the executioner. Probably not a purer spirit nor one more attuned for heaven existed in France than the one which then ascended from the scaffold, we trust, to the bosom of God. Maria Antoinette died with the pride and the firmness of the invincible queen. Elizabeth yielded herself to the spirit of submissive piety, and fell asleep upon the bosom of her Savior. Our thoughts would more willingly follow her to those mansions of rest, where faith instructs us that she winged her flight, than turn again to the prison where the orphan children lingered in solitude and woe.
Situation of the dauphin.The brute Simon.Inhuman treatment of the dauphin.He becomes insane.
Young Louis was left in one of the apartments of the Temple, under the care of the brutal Simon, whose commission it was toget quit of him. To send a child of seven years of age to the guillotine because his father was a king,was a step which the Revolutionary Tribunalthenwas hardly willing to take, out of regard to the opinions of the world. It would be hardly consistent with the character of the great nation topoisonthe child; and yet, while he lived, there was a rallying point around which the sympathies of royalty could congregate.Louis must die!Simon must notkillhim; he must notpoisonhim; he mustget quit of him. The public safety demands it. Patriotism demands it. In the accomplishment of this undertaking, the young prince was shut up alone, entirely alone, like a caged beast, in one of the upper rooms of a tower of the Temple. There he was left, day and night, week after week, and month after month, with no companion, with no employment, with no food for thought, with no opportunity for exercise or to breathe the fresh air. A flagon of water, seldom replenished, was placed at his bedside. The door was occasionally half opened, and some coarse food thrown in to the poor child. He never washed himself. For more than a year, his clothes, his shirt, and his shoes had never been changed. For six months his bed was not made, and the unhappy child, consigned to this living burial, remained silent and immovable upon the impure pallet,breathing his own infection. By long inactivity his limbs became rigid. His mind, by the dead inaction which succeeded terror, lost its energy, and became, not only brutalized, but depraved. The noble child of warm affections, polished manners, and active intellect, was thus degraded far below the ordinary condition of the brute.
Thus eighteen months rolled away, and the poor boy became insane through mental exhaustion and debility. But even then he retained a lively sense of gratitude for every word or act of kindness. At one time, the inhuman wretch who was endeavoring by slow torture to conduct this child to the grave, seized him by the hair, and threatened to dash out his brains against the wall. A surgeon, M. Naulin, who chanced to be near by, interfered in behalf of the unhappy victim, and rescued him from the rage of the tyrant. Two pears that evening were given to the half-famished child for his supper. He hid them under his pillow, and went supperless to sleep. The next day he presented the two pears to his benefactor, very politely expressing his regret that he had no other means of manifesting his gratitude.