To the scaffold (30 page)

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^ OWARD the end of 1787 the elderly principal minister Lomenie de Brienne began to cough blood. He was sixty years old, and his batdes with the Assembly of Notables and Paris Parlement had drained his energies. His relations with Antoinette were very good, but he had a difficult time with the ever vacillating, frequently obstinate King, who was alternately fearful and obstreperous in his attitude toward his crumbling government.

An enlightened man with a brilliant mind, and an exceptionally capable administrator, the Archbishop lacked force and finnness. Like his royal master, he had not been gifted with the power to command. What effectiveness he might have had had in any case been undercut by the blows to the royal authority suffered under Calonne, and by the widespread perception that the King could no longer govern without the cooperation of the Paris Parlement.^ Far from being trusted, Lomenie de Brienne was hated and reviled, though in fact he had a clear grasp of the nature of France's complex crisis and was not devoid of intelligent proposals for reform. But as the year closed he was yielding more and more to the pressures of his office, and his health was beginning to betray him.

One of the pressures that weighed on the principal minister was France's military impotence. In mid-September the Prussian army had crossed the Dutch frontier and in succeeding weeks had systematically brought all of the Dutch provinces under its control. Lacking funds to pay the soldiers, no French army could

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march to the defense of the Dutch, and many doubted whether France could defend herself if attacked. Once the most feared military power in Europe, France had been reduced to near help-, lessness.2

Count Alvensleben, an envoy of the new Prussian King Frederick William II (Frederick II had died the previous year), came to Versailles not long after the Dutch defeat and was profoundly dismayed by the situation he found there. The glittering surfaces of Versailles and the shallow narcissism of its occupants repelled him. "Everything here is in ceremony, in formal dress, in veneer, in phrases, in national gasconnades, in tinsel, in intrigue," he wrote in his report to the Prussian King. "Substance always gives way to form. Twenty-five million united egoists, and vain of their union, despising all other nations. . . . and everybody up in arms if any attempt is made to remedy the evil and destroy the abuses."^

Coming as he was from the rather austere Prussian court, the Count was bound to be startled by the surface opulence of Versailles. But in his report he emphasized more the prevailing attitude of the French than their materialism. "France is like a young man whom one cannot free of his debts, because the more money he has the more credit he gets, and the more credit he gets the more he squanders." Reform was unthinkable as long as the obsession with extravagance went unchecked. "It is as impossible for France to put order into her affairs and consequence into her plans as it is for water to go against the current," the Count wrote. "If credit were revived, the squandering, the disorder, the magnificence of attire, the abuses, and the arrogance of conceit will go on with head raised and the people will be more ground down than ever before."^

It was not only that the government needed reform, the entire nation needed to be regenerated, preferably by a king with the will, the power and the perseverance to sweep away the old abuses and to provide moral leadership. But Louis was not such a king. He spent as much of his time as possible away from the palace hunting, and when he was present, he was either "capricious, short-tempered and curmudgeonly," Alvensleben wrote, or else he was inmiature and foolish. The Count was not the only visitor to Versailles to remark on the King's childishness during Mass in the palace chapel, when he customarily sat next to his

brother Artois and the two talked and laughed loudly like adolescents during most of the service.

The new year 1788 opened with a fresh salvo from the Paris Parlement. The members protested the King's "illegal" act in forcing the registration of the edicts during the previous November, and tried to assert their authority in declaring unlawful the King's right to arrest and imprison any subject without trial.^ When in response Louis attempted to undercut the parlement's procedural authority by substituting an appointive "plenary court" where laws would be registered the parlementaries again asserted their views, in a forceful statement of the "fundamental laws" of the kingdom. Only the parlements, they proclaimed on May 3, had the right to register laws, and the King could not replace them with newly invented substitutes. And no new taxes could be imposed without the authorization of the Estates General.

It was the boldest language used to date by members of the opposition, and Louis, after months of inaction, took action, suspending the Paris Parlement and arresting two of its most radical members. Immediately a firestorm of protest erupted. The twelve provincial parlements objected vociferously, and in many cities throughout France there were riots. In Toulouse, Rennes and Dijon the rioters ousted the civic authorities; in Grenoble, royal troops were assaulted by the townspeople and a mass meeting was held where the summoning of the Estates General was demanded. Then, to add to all the upheaval, a more ominous event occurred. Just as the grain in the fields was ripening, with the harvest not far off, a freak hailstorm felled the stalks, destroying half the crops in the kingdom. Now, in addition to all the unrest, before long there would be famine to cope with as well.

All in all, Antoinette wrote in a letter to her brother. Emperor Joseph, it had so far been "a very vexatious year." "God grant," she added, "that the next one will be better."

She had been vexed by many things: her "anxieties and agitations" about the government; her fear that, if France were forced into war, Louis might have no choice but to summon an Estates General too quickly, "before tranquillity is perfectly reestablished"; the continuing effort to cut back on expenses; her ever-present worries about her children.^ Mousseline had had a severe fever and Antoinette had stayed by her bedside for two nights—on one of the nights Louis joined her—praying and watch-

ing for signs of improvement. ("The poor little thing said such tender things to us," she confided to Joseph, "that she made us cry.") Mousseline was nine years old, and "beginning to become a person," her mother told another correspondent. She was beginning to leave childhood behind, and was capable of being good company.

The weak health of the dauphin was a constant source of anxiety. He was bedridden, a near cripple, feverish and thin. Antoinette tried in vain to find justifications for his worsening state. His adult teeth were coming in, she wrote to the Emperor; his teething might be causing his feveis. Then too, one ought to keep in mind that the King had been weak and puny as a child, and now he was one of the strongest men in the kingdom. The dauphin was only six years old and might grow out of whatever ailed him. Hoping that a change of air would do him good, Antoinette sent her son to Meudon for a month, and when he came back to Versailles he seemed slightly improved. But he still had intermittent fevers, his spine was still deformed and he remained puny and unhealthy. All in all, though he had some good days, the bad days were more frequent, and Antoinette, watching him, knew in her heart that there was not much reason for hope.^

Summer arrived, and in Paris the life of the boulevards went on as pleasantly as ever. Pleasure seekers gathered in the warm evenings to stroll along the broad walks under the huge trees, the roads were filled with carriages, the tables crowded at the outdoor cafes and gardens, where musicians played and people paused to rest and refresh themselves. A visitor from England admired the "cheerfulness and whimsical variety of the spectacle, the confusion of riches and poverty, hotels and hovels, pure air and stinks, people of all sorts and conditions, from the Prince of the blood to the porter." Ordinary Parisians put on their best silk breeches and ruffled shirts and came in groups to stroll or dine, dandies paraded on horseback, fashionably dressed women sat at the little tables surrounded by their admirers. Footmen, enjoying an evening's liberty, sat and drank beer, old soldiers lounged and smoked, and talked of long-ago campaigns, shop women in their chintz gowns flirted with hairdresser's assistants who courted them, hat in hand.

"The buildings [are] very good," the English traveler went on, "the walks delightful, and most of the places of amusement adjoin." There were amusements in abundance, from plays and ac-

robats to dwarfs and giants, magicians and rope-dancers. A wax museum drew many spectators, where for two sous one could see "the King, the Queen and the dauphin, sitting under a baldaquin, and a bit in front of them, seated at a table, three personages representing Voltaire, Rousseau and [Benjamin] Franldin." The late Frederick II of Prussia was there too, "a piece very well executed, and they say taken from the original." There were puppet shows and concerts, freaks and dancing dogs. And there were many things to buy, cakes and fruit and flowers, prints and fans and lapdogs. Peddlers ran along the roads, ignoring the cheap crowded fiacres but jumping up on the steps of the fine painted carriages to offer their wares to the elegant ladies and gentlemen inside.^

There was much political talk, and the street orators held forth on the evils of the tax burden. "Republican" dress was conspicuously in evidence, as were powdered hair and steel buttons, but for the most part the worries of the day were forgotten. People complained, however, about what was contemptuously called the "wall of captivity"—the wall beyond the boulevards erected four years earlier to facilitate the collection by the tax farmers of duties on goods coming into the city—that blocked the view of the countryside and "increased the corruption of the air, by obstructing every breeze from the country, occasioning the death of thousands of feeble and asthmatic persons." The tax farmers were hated, for their wall as for their ill-gotten wealth and the corrupt system of government it represented. And as the evening advanced people became more voluble, talking, as they now did at all times and in all places in Paris, about the deficit and the Estates General.

On August 8 the King announced that the Estates General would meet on May 1 of the following year, 1789, an announcement intended to restore the government's shaky credit. The treasury was empty, and the financiers, who had no faith in Lomenie de Brienne, would not lend any more. A week after the first announcement came another: the treasury would no longer honor its debts with cash payments, but would issue promissory notes instead, bearing five percent interest.

Notes from a bankrupt treasury were worthless, the very issuance of the notes was an admission that the government's credit was at last completely exhausted. Parisians panicked.

"Anxiety and fear sat upon every countenance," a contempo-

rary wrote. Creditors large and small called in their debts, attempting to amass as much cash as possible before the entire economy collapsed. Dreading a catastrophe of massive proportions, people once again took to the streets, rioting in protest against the "forced loan" represented by the valueless promissory notes and demanding the dismissal of Lom^nie de Brienne. The Archbishop, now hopelessly discredited, had lost control of the situation.

Louis retreated into passivity, and Antoinette, greatly worried, sent for the only man she could trust to give her sound advice: the Comte de Mercy.

Mercy had by this time been in France nearly twenty years, and he was nearing sixty. He knew the workings of the French government as well as anyone, he had observed it at close range in person and through the eyes of his numerous spies. He was astute, jaundiced, realistic. And he was ready to be of service to the Queen at this juncture.

Antoinette and Mercy knew, as indeed all France believed, that there was only one possible replacement for Lomenie de Brienne, only one man whom the financiers trusted and who could therefore gain a desperately needed extension of credit. Jacques Necker, out of the government for many years, would have to be brought back in. Antoinette had already convinced the principal minister that he should yield the financial responsibilities to Necker. But, she told Mercy, she was not at all certain that Necker would accept the office of Controller-General so long as the failing Lomenie de Brienne remained in his post at the head of the royal council. But if the Archbishop stepped aside, who would take his place? She needed Mercy's advice and diplomatic skill.

"We must have someone," she wrote to Mercy on August 19, "especially with M. Necker, he needs someone to slow him down. The person above me [that is. King Louis] is not capable of doing so and as for me, whatever may happen, whatever people say, I am only in the second rank and, in spite of the confidence the first has in me, he often makes me aware of it."

Mercy did his best, but Necker refused to come into the government under the nominal leadership of Lomenie de Brienne. After nearly a week of negotiating, during which the unrest in Paris continued and the ill effects of the collapse of the treasury

spread, Mercy convinced the Archbishop to resign. There would be no principal minister to replace him, Necker would rule all. There would be no one to "slow him down," though it soon became apparent that Necker did not intend to introduce reforms. The Estates General was due to meet in a little over seven months, and he would await the deliberations of that body. Meanwhile he sought—and found—credit. Overnight the treasury acquired the wherewithal to prolong its functioning.

Antoinette had presided over the crucial change of ministers, yet far from taking pride in her competence, she was shaking with fear. "I tremble—excuse this weakness, for it is I who have brought about [Necker's] return," she wrote to Mercy. "It is my fate to bring bad luck; and, if his infernal machinations fail once again, or he diminishes the King's authority, I shall be hated even more."^ Even if Necker survived in office, and made no mistakes or miscalculations, she feared that the tremendous tension under which he had to work might kill him. Clearly she had suffered, and was still suffering, caught in the middle between her ineffectual but proud husband who "often made her aware" that she was his inferior and the ubiquitous critics who chastised her no matter what she did. Even her old nemesis Adelaide, Louis's strong-willed aunt, had tormented her. Adelaide came to see Antoinette during the last days of Lomenie de Brienne's ministry and, witnesses said, reduced her to tears. After the interview, the Queen "was seen with her eyes red as if she had been crying."^^

The return of Necker had an immediate and startling effect. The government's stock rose, people celebrated publicly, and there was a fitfiil resurgence of gratitude toward the King and Queen. It appeared that the King had finally bestirred himself and taken a necessary step toward improving the finances, and to his subjects this seemed a good omen for the future. Yet the celebrations in the last days of August marking the advent of Necker had an ugly side. Eyewitnesses described how the rejoicing turned to rioting, and the rioting escalated alarmingly.

"I walked out in the evening," wrote John Villiers, later Earl of Clarendon, "and saw the whole of the Place Dauphine in a blaze, from the burning [in effigy] of the Archbishop, and the illumination of the windows; one huge sea of heads covered the whole Place, and thousands, and tens of thousands, were wrapt in confusion, noise, and violence." Guardsmen marched through the

Streets, ten deep, some mounted and some on foot, fighting with the people, "who repelled their drawn swords with clubs and showers of stones."^^

It seemed to Villiers, as to others, that the Parisians no longer had any reverence for authority, that they despised the military ("which once they revered and trembled at"), and felt themselves to be in possession of a power more fearsome and more vast than any the government claimed. Yet Paris had a police force of only some fifteen hundred men, most of them untrained, to defend its six hundred thousand citizens. In subsequent months the daring, unrestrained crowds stoned the carriages of aristocrats, yelled insults at women and attacked the servants of the wealthy. Their hatred of all privilege, their resentment of the nobles, especially the courtiers, for living in splendor at public expense emboldened them. And as the months passed, and the weather turned so cold that the Seine froze and the roofs of the houses were buried under deep falls of snow, their hatreds and resentments increased.

The winter of 1788-89 was one of the coldest within memory. Week after week the temperature remained below freezing, the river was a solid block of ice and long icicles hung from the statue of Henri IV near the Pont Neuf. Peddlers tramped their routes, singing out "Fresh salmon!" "Old boots!" "Mushrooms!" "Ribbons!" "New songs!" and a hundred other cries while flailing their arms to keep warm, but there were few buyers. The cold and the snow kept people in their houses; the filth flowing in the gutters turned to ice, and as the snow was too deep to permit the carters who normally collected it to haul it away, the refuse heaped up, and stank horribly.

In the Saltpetri^re, the vast workhouse where seven thousand poor women and girls, foundlings and the sick were sheltered, the inmates sat at their workbenches and sewed with frozen fingers. One ward of the oldest hospital in the city, the Hotel-Dieu, was set aside for receiving the shivering poor who feigned illness in order to be admitted. But this ward had room for only four hundred people, and there were many thousands in need of food and a refuge from the cold.^^ \xi the Foundling Hospital, run by the Daughters of Charity, the infants wailed in their cradles. In this chilly season thirty or forty newborns were left on the nuns' doorstep every night, and many did not live until morning. Despite the terrible weather, hardy folk still came on Sundays to see the

open-air animal fights in the rue de S^vre, which were always held, winter and summer. But the numbing cold soon drove them from the arena of combat.

Every winter the poorest of the country people drifted into Paris, day laborers and homeless peasants who hoped to find enough work to feed themselves until spring. They crowded into cheap lodgings, two and three to a bed, scavenging when there was no work, giving up their children to the Foundling Hospital when they could no longer feed them, begging when they had to. Paris also attracted the blind, who braved the streets in pairs and trios, tapping the cobblestones with their sticks, their copper bowls held out to receive alms. But in this harsh winter it seemed as if there were many more blind men appealing for aid, many more cripples sitting on church steps or huddled in doorways with outstretched palms. And as the bitter cold continued, their wretchedness increased.

Axel Fersen, who was in France throughout the winter, recorded his impressions. "We are having a very severe winter," he wrote, "freezing for three weeks; the cold has been up to 13 degrees and at midday 2, 3 and 4 degrees. For a week past there has been four inches of snow in the streets of Paris and the roofs are covered. The river is frozen, which hampers the provisioning of Paris, so that they fear a famine; it is also feared in the provinces. There is very little wheat, and what there is they cannot grind because of the lack of water, for there has been no rain since Au-gust."i3

With the river turned to a solid block of ice and the roads made impassable by snow, the city was cut off. No barges came up the Seine filled with wood, and so there was no fuel to heat the houses. No grain boats came in at the quai du Louvre, and supplies of grain fell drastically. Without grain, the bakers could not bake bread, and bread was the staple in the diet of the poor. The markets were periodically flooded out, much good food was swept away and what remained was sold for high prices. "There is great misery in spite of the numerous well-ordered measures taken by public and private charity to alleviate it," the Spanish ambassador reported. "It is to be feared that it will get worse and that the coming year will be a calamitous one."^'*

The specter of famine was terrifying. Everyone knew that grain supplies were low because of the previous summer's hail-

Storms, and now the cold was complicating the situation. Whenever there were shortages, speculators moved in to take advantage of the high demand, which sent prices still higher. The King, always compassionate, visited the poor in the villages near Versailles and gave some of the treasury's borrowed money to alleviate their want. He and Necker bought supplies of grain abroad and brought it to Paris at enormous expense, then installed hand mills to grind the flour. (While the weather remained below freezing, the water mills could not operate.) But whatever the government tried to do, it was never enough. The lottery of twelve million francs which the King himself had instituted to benefit the farmers ruined by the hailstorm was forgotten; instead, Parisians repeated again and again how Orleans had sold some of his finest paintings and donated to the hungry the eight million francs they brought. ^^ Antoinette's charitable efforts were hardly noticed.

The longer the freezing weather went on, the more people were thrown out of work. Transport was at a standstill, nothing could be bought or sold. With the grain market deserted, all the small businesses in the neighborhood—eating houses, taverns, inns, brothels—were shut down. The laundry boats could not operate. Workshops and factories in the Faubourgs St.-Antoine and St.-Marcel closed, leaving thousands of men unemployed. Those who had come to the city in search of employment found themselves with no prospects. And at the same time, the price of bread was rising, from twelve sous in November to fourteen sous in December and still higher as the new year opened. At the best of times the average Parisian spent half of his or her income on bread. With no work, and bread prices rising sharply, starvation loomed.

Wolves howled in the dark forests that ringed the ice-bound city, and Parisians, gathering in fear around their cold hearths, said their prayers and waited for spring.

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