To the scaffold (41 page)

fied by the weakening of France, and were unwilling as yet to take any steps toward strengthening the Bourbon throne. Mercy had been recalled to Vienna, Necker had resigned and returned to Switzerland. Mirabeau, though still a loyal monarchist, had not shown himself to be a useful ally. Antoinette could not expect help from any of her relatives. The most powerful of them was her brother Leopold, the former Grand Duke of Tuscany who had become Holy Roman Emperor on the death of Joseph II. Unlike Joseph, who for all his eccentricities had been affectionate toward Antoinette, and concerned for her plight, Leopold was distant and unresponsive, and disconcertingly sympathetic to the more moderate ideas of the revolutionaries.^

"I had before me," the ambassador noted in a dispatch, "a desperate woman at the very end of her strength in dealing with the present situation." Others who saw the Queen thought she looked "very ill," and were shocked at the sight of her white hair and gaunt face. She kept her son near her as often as possible, and was always anxious to display him, as a sort of protective talisman. "They say here that he is her shield," wrote Lord Momington, an Englishman who visited the Tuileries, "she never stirs out without him." 10

The departure date was fixed for March 1791, but in February a series of incidents took place that forced a postponement. First, Adelaide and Victoire emigrated, leaving their house at Bellevue only hours before an angry crowd arrived, determined to prevent their departure. The two women carried passports granted by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and signed by the King, yet the National Guard pursued them and arrested them at the town of Ar-nay-le-Duc in Burgundy, keeping them there for eleven days until the Assembly, all but coerced by Mirabeau, decreed their safe passage out of France.

Next, incited by an epidemic of rumors that the King was about to follow his aunts into exile, and that the dauphin would soon be smuggled out of the country, an enormous crowd massed in the Faubourg St.-Antoine and began attacking the nearby castle of Vincennes, in the mistaken belief that the King meant to make his escape via an underground passage being dug to the castle from the Tuileries, a distance of under two miles. Vincennes was in fact under repair, the Assembly having ordered that it be restored for use as a prison, but the angry laborers from the

faubourg, out of work and out of money, saw the fortress as a second Bastille and swarmed over it, dismantling it stone by stone. At a considerable cost in popularity, Lafayette ordered in the National Guard, and forcibly retook Vincennes, but not before another disturbance had arisen.

Among the shadowy counter-revolutionary organizations that had sprung up in recent months was a band of courtiers calling themselves the Knights of the Dagger, pledged to protect the King and, if possible, to get him out of Paris. When rioting broke out in the Faubourg St.-Antoine the Knights, some four hundred strong, strapped on their swords and rushed to the Tuileries to rescue the King and his family. There they encountered resistance, and were hewing about them and creating confusion and mayhem when Lafayette arrived and persuaded Louis—who seems to have been unaware that the Knights hoped to kidnap him—to call off the overzealous courtiers. Eventually a force of guardsmen disarmed and arrested them.

The rioting and rumor-mongering seemed endless, the shocks and outrages against the royals almost palpable. Emperor Leopold was said to be massing troops in Belgium. Antoinette was rumored to be having an affair with Lafayette, in hopes of alienating him from the goals of the revolution and enslaving him to do her fiendish bidding. The hated emigres were said to be buying arms and raising armies, and sending their agents into France to subvert the revolution. The Assembly no longer referred to Louis as King but as "chief public functionary." The dauphin was "first deputy," Antoinette was "first deputy's mother."*' And a new voice was being heard raised in anger against the despotism of the chief public functionary, the voice of a dapper little lawyer from Arras, Maximilien Robespierre, president of the Jacobin Club.

The assault on the Church, and in particular on those thousands of priests—some twenty thousand, by one estimate—who refused to take the oath of loyalty intensified. Lists of nonjuring priests were sold in the streets, and those whose names appeared on the lists were shouted down when they tried to say Mass. Some were beaten, threatened at pistol-point, or chased out of their churches. The brutality became worse when in March of 1791 Pope Pius VI denounced the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and suspended all clergy who had taken the oath.

Easter was approaching, and the royal family wanted to spend

Holy Week at St.-Cloud, away from the tensions of Paris. The servants were sent on ahead to prepare the palace, trunks were packed and orders given. The day before they were to leave the Tuileries Lx)uis went to the palace chapel to receive the eucharist from his grand almoner, a nonjuring priest. Spies informed the Assembly of this act of disloyalty and the word spread immediately to the political clubs and outward into the working-class districts. At once there was a huge popular reaction, and by the following morning, which was Palm Sunday, placards appeared accusing the chief public functionary of breaking the law. An armed crowd grew on the Place du Carrousel in front of the palace. Ignoring the menacing Parisians, Louis, Antoinette and their children came out and entered the carriage, as Lafayette stood by with a troop of cavalry to escort them to St.-Cloud. The cavalrymen closed ranks around the vehicle. Then, as if on cue, the Parisians set up a terrifying shouting and catcalling, waving the weapons they carried and making the King, who had recently suffered a week-long attack of high fever and acute respiratory illness, turn pale.

At once the guardsmen too turned from protectors into a taunting rabble.

"Fat pig! Fucking aristocrat! Bugger of an aristocrat! You're not fit to be King! We want Orleans!"

They broke ranks and leaned in at the carriage windows, shouting at Louis that he was nothing but a public servant, and an overpaid public servant at that. He could not leave, they would stop him. They would shoot him if they had to. Some drew sabers and attacked the postilions, others violently assaulted the palace officials who came out to see what was going on.

Louis tried to muster his dignity, and demanded that the guardsmen open the gates of the inner courtyard, to let the carriage proceed. But they laughed at him, and laughed even more when Lafayette, after shouting at them and pleading with them until he was red-faced with exasperation, threatened to resign his post. Applause greeted the threat, and more insults to the King.

The crowd outside the gates was enjoying the spectacle, cheering the soldiers on, battering at the gates and chanting "Long live the National Assembly!"

A guardsman, his sword drawn, galloped straight at Louis. "You are a lawbreaker!" he shouted. "You harbor priests who have not taken the oath!"

"Miserable villain!" the King retorted. "Who appointed you judge of my conscience?"

Both Louis and Antoinette managed to retain their composure in the midst of this nightmarish scene, Fersen thought—though he was hardly an unbiased observer. "Both spoke with much firmness and coolness," he wrote in a letter to a Swedish friend. But neither they nor Lafayette nor any of the Guards officers could control the mutinous soldiers, who, egged on by the Parisians beyond the gates and elated by their own power, continued to hold the King and Queen hostage in their carriage for more than two hours. They stopped short of harming them physically, their torment was all verbal. Worst of all was the fear they inspired, the dread of harm, the knowledge that at any moment the guardsmen might elect to open the gates and abandon the entire family to the fiiry of the Parisians.

More soldiers arrived and joined the mutineers, shouting and swearing at the King, calling the Queen "a pretty bitch who thinks she can give us orders," taunting and jeering. A few grenadiers, Fersen noticed, were weeping.

"Sire, you are loved," they whispered to the pale Louis. "You are adored by your people. But do not go. Your life would be in danger. You are ill-advised, misled. The people want you to send away the priests, they are afraid of losing you."

Far from being moved by the loyalty of these men, the King responded angrily. They were the ones who were misled, he insisted. How could anyone doubt his intentions, or his love for his people? *2

The milling and shouting, far from subsiding, seemed to gain strength as the hours passed. Finally Louis, realizing that he was beaten and that no municipal authority, no deputies, no troops were going to rescue him, gave the order for the carriage to turn around. When it reached the palace he and Antoinette and the children got out, and at once they were mobbed by the guardsmen—though some of the men assured him, "We will defend you" and followed him all the way inside and up the staircase to the very door of their private apartments.

"It is impossible to give any idea of what we had to suffer during Holy Week," Madame de Tourzel recalled in her memoirs. Threatened by the very men whom they counted on to protect them, all too aware of the vulnerability of the Tuileries and of Lafayette's waning influence, forced to attend Mass on Easter

Sunday at the parish church of the Tuileries, St.-Germain I'Au-xerrois, where oath-taking priests officiated, Louis and Antoinette were in an agony of anxiety. They had to get away, to escape the menace that was closing in around them, to save themselves before the Parisians overwhelmed the Tuileries as they had Versailles, and slaked their thirst for vengeance in regicide.

^26^

T was very late, the palace was settling into quiet. The sentries who guarded the gates, doors and windows stood silent, willing themselves to stay awake through the long watch of the night, aware that Lafayette must not iSnd them dozing when he made his nightly visit to the Tuileries. On the long torchlit terrace fronting the gardens, guardsmen paced back and forth, alert for suspicious sounds and unexpected movements in the shadows.

It was known that the King had made plans to escape. Antoinette's wardrobe woman had gone to the H6tel de Ville and told the authorities there about the suspicious nkessaire that her mistress had sent to Brussels on a flimsy pretext. The guards were cautioned, and told to double their vigilance. But a month had now passed since the spy had given her information, and no escape attempt had been made.

Inside the palace the long corridors were dim and still, the passageways deserted save for the soldiers who kept watch there, armed and in uniform, listening for any unusual sound yet lapsing, despite themselves, into a light trance. Nothing seemed different on this night, Monday, the twentieth of June. No one thought it significant that Count Fersen had visited the palace that afternoon, not leaving until six o'clock, or that after he left the Queen, walking in the gardens with her children, looked red-eyed as if she had been weeping. She often wept, after all, and Fersen was a very frequent visitor, having come the previous day and stayed until midnight, and the day before that.

No one thought it worth noting when, a Httle after eleven a woman and two Httle girls, one about twelve, the other five or six, emerged from the unguarded door to the Due de Villequier's apartments—the Duke had emigrated—and stepped out into the courtyard. No one recognized the woman as Madame de Tourzel, governess of the dauphin and his sister, and it occurred to no one that the younger child, wearing a silk dress and bonnet made by the governess's daughter for use on this night, might be the heir to the French throne.

The trio walked unchallenged toward a line of hired coaches, approached one of the drivers—a very tall, handsome fellow who was chatting amiably with a stranger and idly flicking his whip— and entered his rather old-fashioned carriage. The coachman, who was in actuality Fersen, swung into his seat and drove off toward the river, passing along the quays in a wide arc and then, after about half an hour, stopping on the rue St. Honors not far from the palace to wait for more passengers.

At about a quarter to twelve another woman slipped out of the palace, dressed inconspicuously in a plain morning gown and with the white cap of a servant covering her hair, and made her way to the waiting carriage. If she was noticed, she was not considered worth scrutinizing, though she was in fact the King's sister.

For the past dozen nights the sentries had become accustomed to seeing the bulky, portly form of one of the King's servants, the Chevalier de Coigny, go past them at midnight when his duties at the palace were completed. So they gave little more than a passing glance at the rather clumsy, heavyset man, so like the Chevalier in shape and dress and wig, who passed them and paused briefly to buckle his shoe before making his way out into the street and into the waiting carriage. His dark overcoat and round hat, and the walking stick he carried, were those of a lesser servant, not of a king.

The safe arrival of this fifth passenger was a great relief, for it meant that he had convinced Lafayette and Bailly, who came every night to check on security at the palace, that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. (Both men, by chance, had passed the waiting carriage in the rue St. Honore, making the passengers tremble and shrink back into the shadows.)