To the scaffold (28 page)

where Fersen was concerned (the ever gallant Swede had seduced his wife) and he had little love for Antoinette, as she had tried to have him replaced. Still, Antoinette was clearly imprudent—or perhaps by this time she had ceased to care very much what people said about her.

She did care, though, when her lack of circumspection caused her husband pain. One day while out hunting, Louis was handed a packet of letters. He read them at once, sitting down on the grass and becoming so absorbed in what he was doing that he forgot the hunt completely. His equerries tactfully retired; when they returned they found the King in a terrible state, so distraught that he could not even mount his horse. His moon face was tear-stained, his small yellow eyes red-rimmed. The equerries hurried him into a carriage and took him home. It turned out that one of the letters was an indictment of Antoinette for infidelity with Fersen. Apparently it contained something more than the commonplace gossip that had been making the rounds of the court for years, and that Louis had heard often enough before, something truly upsetting.

"They want to take from us the only friend we can rely on," Antoinette said sorrowfiiUy when Louis told her what had happened. Probably disingenuously, she suggested that they banish Fersen from Versailles, but the King would not hear of it. Hurt as he was, he too relied on Fersen and needed him more than ever in this season of crisis.

Whatever Louis may have believed about his wife and the handsome Swede, this was no time to torment Antoinette with accusations. Her baby daughter was dying.

Little Sophie lay in her cradle, fighting for breath, her weak lungs failing. Antoinette kept watch beside her, in tears over her "poor little angel," heartbroken and powerless to save the tiny child who was growing more feeble by the day. On June 15 Sophie became dramatically worse, and four days later she was dead. Antoinette shut herself away at Trianon, with Louis and her sister-in-law Elisabeth. "Come," the Queen wrote to Elisabeth, "we shall weep over the death of my poor little angel. ... I have need of your heart to console mine." While the mother grieved, surgeons opened the small body and examined the organs. As expected, the lungs were found to be "in a very bad state." ( Antoinette grieved—and clutched her older son to her with

dread. He too was sickly, his malformed spine prevented him from running and playing like a normal child, and his perpetual seriousness was unnatural. In her worst moments Antoinette feared for his life; now that one of her children was dead the horrifying possibility seemed to move closer that another of them might die—and the most important of them, the heir to the throne.

But there was to be no leisure to indulge private anxieties or private grief. The monarchy was in crisis, and the King was unable to face the crisis squarely, much less take action to remedy it. Panic-stricken, tearful and irresolute, Louis turned to his wife to rescue him from the quagmire into which he was sinking, knowing that she would be stalwart where he was timid.

Stalwart she was—but untutored in the intricacies of governing. She was intelligent, she had opinions, she was not afraid to confront the ministers and state her opinions boldly. But courage and common sense were woefully inadequate; what was needed was leadership and expertise and a rigorous conmiitment to fundamental change. And Antoinette could offer none of these things. She was far too unpopular to exercise leadership, even if her gender (and her temperament) had not been obstacles. She had no expertise to offer. And she was her mother's daughter: the concept of fundamental change was foreign to her. If there were problems with finance or with popular discontent, then her common sense told her that the ministers must be to blame. Change the ministers, and all would be well.

Fersen described the state of affairs at Versailles very well. "The King is weak and suspicious," he wrote. "He trusts only the Queen and it appears that it is she who does everything. The ministers often go to see her and keep her informed of all business." It appeared that Antoinette was trying to take over the government. People said what they had been saying for years, that the King drank and that his wife saw to it that he stayed drunk so that she could "make him sign anything she wanted." But Fersen knew the truth. Lx)uis had no particular liking for drink. He wasn't drunk, he was frightened. He was hiding behind his wife."*

Behind her facade of resolution and courage, Antoinette was miserable. "My happy days are over," she told Madame Campan, "since they have made me into an intrigante.'' She knew that she was being criticized for meddling, she knew that she was hated.

There were even audible murmurs of disapproval among her servants. One day she heard one of the musicians in the chapel remark that "a Queen who does her duty will remain in her apartments to knit." Hearing this, she told her bedchamber woman, she felt a pang. "I said within myself, Toor creature, you are right; but you do not understand my situation; I yield to necessity and my unfortunate destiny.'"^

AH her enemies now stepped up their campaigns against her. Libelous pamphlets sprang up, cartoons proliferated. Spiteful Adelaide, the King's aunt, now living in retirement with her sister Victoire at Bellevue, made a point of collecting the venomous literature circulating about the Queen, and gathered all the spiteful gossip she could, then spread it widely, both in print and by word of mouth. Louis's brother Provence, pleased by all the turmoil and hoping that his talents and abilities might be recognized at last, took it upon himself to tour the country, displaying himself to his brother's subjects in true princely splendor, very nearly usurping the King's role. During his tour he complained that the Queen had prevented him from joining his brother's council. But for Antoinette, he seemed to be saying, he could put his gifts to good use in the service of the country. While strutting magnificently in public, in private Provence was writing pamphlets, verses, scurrilous stories about Antoinette and her erstwhile circle of friends, all designed to spread discontent and improve his chances of gaining power.

Caught up in the maelstrom, Antoinette sought to find peace in the eye of the storm. She spent time with her children, hovering over her firstborn protectively. She went riding with Fersen as often as she could. She took lessons in English from Madame Campan, and for a few brief weeks she even studied German, her mother tongue, but gave it up, "finding all the difticulties which a Frenchwoman, who should take up the study too late, would have to encounter."^ She had become too much a Frenchwoman—in her own phrase, "a Frenchwoman to her fingertips."^ A traveler returning from Senegal brought the Queen a black child as a gift. Instead of making him a page, which would have been the conventional thing for her to do, she took him into her household and instructed a servant to look after him. He was baptized Jean Amilcar, and was supported, as were the other adoptive children she took in from time to time, from her budget.

That budget was shrinking, thanks to the efforts of Lom^nie de Brienne. Nearly two hundred of the Queen's servants had been dismissed for reasons of economy, and to save still more money, Antoinette ceased to hold dinners and balls. She began to conserve her elaborate wardrobe, ordering old gowns mended and old slippers resoled. These were token gestures, hardly worth making given the immensity of the deficit. Still, they had some impact on the day-to-day running of the court, where the shortage of money was so desperate that, as Mercy wrote, "they do not know how to meet the slightest expenses."

Meanwhile the political atmosphere was becoming more and more unsettled and fluid. After dismissing the Assembly of Notables, Lomenie de Brienne found that he could not overcome the opposition of the Paris Parlement, which refused to register the reforming edicts. Signs of dissatisfaction were everywhere, in the meetings of the new Paris political clubs and discussion societies, in the angry broadsheets plastered on walls, in the mass meetings held in many parts of the country. When Lom6nie de Brienne was appointed, the other ministers had resigned, creating more havoc at the center of power. Clearly the existing mechanisms of government were inadequate. An entirely new mode of procedure had to be found, a new forum in which the crisis could be discussed and, if possible, controlled. In their enthusiasm for things English the French looked with approval on the English Parliament—and realized that France too had once had such a body, the Estates General, which had not met for nearly a hundred and seventy-five years. Why not revive it?

The critical clamor reached a peak in August of 1787 and the King angrily banished the Paris Parlement to Troyes in hopes that the move would force the members to be compliant. The political clubs too were banned—which set off renewed protests. The unrest was beginning to coalesce around the Paris Parlement and its defiance; instead of being merely one among thirteen parlements, the Paris Parlement was coming to stand for all opposition to the government. The opinions of Parisians—who hated Lom6nie de Brienne—loomed large. And the King's wealthy dissolute distant cousin Philippe, Due d'Orleans, who had always been popular among Parisians, now began to appear to be the chief spokesman for the opposition.

Orleans had never been content with the role allotted to him.

He had ability, but as a member of the younger branch of the Bourbons he was never allowed to let that ability shine. He had hoped to become high admiral of the royal navy, but his one o[>-portunity for naval glory, at the Battle of Ushant, ended in undeserved disgrace. He subsequently obtained a minor army command, but won no distinction. He was in a sense the natural focus of opposition to the monarchy—political dissatisfaction traditionally coalesced around Princes of the blood—and as the monarchy became enmired in difficulties he emerged more and more as the champion of the people in the cause of less oppressive government and a respite from chaos.

To Orleans's enemies he was a vain, selfish rake who cared for nothing but his own sordid pleasure. "He corrupted everything within his reach," wrote Madame La Tour du Pin, who despised him. Antoinette made fun of him, calling him "colonel-in-chief of the empty heads" (Les T^tes L^^res) after his regiment (Les Chevau-Legers). But to his friends and companions in debauchery he was merely a rich, self-indulgent and uninhibited young man who liked to play. Lord Herbert was among Orleans's guests in 1780, and left a record of how the host and his guests spent their time during a few carefree days. First they went boar-hunting, then visited Orleans's estate at Mousseaux, where "we dined a pretty numerous, noisy company, there being some females of the party. After dinner we amused ourselves by flinging one another into the water, at last by stripping naked and hunting the hare through wood, water, and so on."^ The Duke was no intellectual, he had little depth of character and no self-discipline. But in the turmoil of the late 1780's he saw his chance to seize power, and was determined to make the most of it.

The resistance of the exiled parlement had begun to affect France's position abroad. Unrest in the Dutch republic threatened to lead to a Prussian invasion, and the French were expected to go to the aid of their Dutch allies should the Prussians attack. Meanwhile Britain was poised to declare war on France, should the French intervene militarily in the Dutch affair. With Vergennes no longer on hand to guide the conduct of foreign relations, and with the recalcitrant parlement refusing to register the edicts that would, in the short run at least, bring in new revenues there could be no question of French intervention, in the Low Countries or

anywhere else. The country's defenses were all but paralyzed by the general lack of funds.

Paris was in chaos. Angry crowds formed, seeking outlets for, their grievances. Noblemen's carriages were seized and halted, and their occupants insulted. Songs were sung about "Lx)uis the Crack-Brained." "Madame Deficit" was excoriated. Straw-stuffed figures of Lomenie de Brienne, Calonne, Yolande de Polignac were burned to wild applause. The crowds were preparing to bum the Queen in effigy too when the police stepped in and prevented it. The King received a letter from his cousin Orleans. Unless the Paris Parlement was recalled, the Duke wrote, France would experience a "fatal conflagration which will be hard to extinguish. "^

By September it was clear that the parlement had won. A more forceful King, a more effectual chief minister might have found a way to overcome the opposition, but Lx)uis XVI and Lomenie de Brienne could not. The parlement was recalled, and Parisians, interpreting the recall as a triumph for their views as put forth by their champions, burst into celebration. In the Place Dauphine, rue du Harlay and other streets near the Law Courts, people massed to cheer their heroes. There were bonfires and exploding fireworks, torchlit meetings and processions. Night after night, Paris was illuminated by the revelers, their singing filled the narrow streets. The King and his courtiers stayed out of the city, which had become an enclave of defiance, a vital node of resistance to the authority of the throne.

In October of 1787 a cultivated British visitor to France, Arthur Young, was present at a dinner party where the unsettled state of the country was the primary topic of discussion. "One opinion pervaded the whole company," he recorded afterwards, "that they are on the eve of some great revolution in the government, that everything points to it." The "confusion in the finances," the enormous deficit, the crying need for a meeting of the Estates General ("yet no ideas formed of what would be the consequence of their meeting"), the lack of ministerial talent sufficient to do more than offer palliatives, the King who was well intentioned but lacking in sufficient "mental resources" to govern decisively, the court "buried in pleasure and dissipation": all these pointed toward a momentous change.

And there were two other factors. Young wrote, which his

To the Scaffold /pj

dinner companions stressed. One was "a strong leaven of liberty, increasing every hour since the American revolution." The other was "a great ferment amongst all ranks of men, who are eager for some change, without knowing what to look to, or to hope for." The ferment, leavened by the idea of liberty, was not likely to be dampened, no matter how the immediate crisis resolved itself. And meanwhile, as Young noted, there was the imminent question of whether, and when, the government would go bankrupt, and what would happen when it did? "Would a bankruptcy occasion a civil war," he asked, "and a total overthrow of the government?" lo