To the scaffold (53 page)

Chapter 22

1 Tourzel, Memoirs, I, 24.

2 Padover, p. 185.

3 Campan, Memoirs, II, 83ff. ^ Ibid., II, 89.

5 Ibid,, II, 325.

Chapter 23

1 H^z^cques, p. 318.

2 Thompson, pp. 71-2; H6z^cques, p. 210.

3 Gouvemeur Morris, A Diary of the French Revolution, ed. Beatrix Gary Davenport (Boston, 1939), 1,271. Morris, who met Fersen for the first time on October 25, 1789, remarked that Fersen's "merit consists in being the Queen's lover." He added that the Swede "had the air of a man exhausted."

4 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, II, 149.

5 Gampan, Memoirs, II, 90.

6 Gouvemeur Morris, I, 219.

7 H^z^ques, p. 323.

8 Ibid., 322.

9 Gampan, Memoirs, II, 91.

10 Padover, p. 186 note.

11 Gouvemeur Morris, I, 328.

12 Gouvemeur Morris thought Necker "a very poor financier."

Gouverneur Morris, I, 385. Lafayette told Morris privately that Necker ought to be kept in office, but only "for the sake of his name."

13 Gouverneur Morris, I, 324.

14/^., I, 296.

15 Thompson, p. 113 cites the Englishman W.A. Miles's views of Mirabeau. The page Hez^cques had quite a different view of "the brave vicomte de Mirabeau, the last of the French knights." H^z^cques, p. 336.

16 Gouverneur Morris, I, 381.

17 Campan, Memoirs, II, 110.

18 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, II, 158.

19 Ibid.

20 Thompson, p. 77.

21 Campan, Memoirs, I, 6. Unfortunately, the Queen burned most of this collection in 1792, fearful of the consequences if her papers fell into the wrong hands.

22 Rocheterie, II, 106.

Chapter 24

1 Fersen, Diary and Correspondence, p. 79. Fersen kept journals that included, he believed, a good deal of valuable information about the King and Queen. In 1791 he entrusted them to a friend, who judged it prudent to bum them—an incalculable loss for historians.

2 Gouverneur Morris, I, 266.

3 Madame La Tour du Pin, among many others, lamented the amo-rality of the Old Regime and saw in it a breeding ground for lack of restraint among the revolutionaries. "When society is so corrupt that corruption itself seems natural," she wrote, "and when no one is shocked at anything, why should anyone be astonished at excesses among the lower classes, who have been set such a bad example?" La Tour du Pin, Memoirs, p. 83.

4 Fersen, Diary and Correspondence, pp. 81-2.

5 Padover, p. 205 note.

6 Tourzel, Memoirs, I, 53.

7 "Ca ira" was said to be Benjamin Franklin's favorite expression. According to H^z^ques, the best known version of "^a ira" was first sung by the prostitutes of the Palais-Royal. Hez^cques, pp. 332-3.

8 Padover, p. 201.

Chapter 25

1 Campan, Memoirs, II, 119-20.

2 Ibid., II, 111.

3 Ibid., II, 108.

4 Lettres de Marie Antoinettey II, 177-8, 186, 183.

5 Campan, Memoirs, II, 115-16. It is clear that throughout 1790 there were escape plans aplenty. In March a nobleman, the Comte d'Inisdal, came to Madame Campan and told her the King would be carried away from the Tuileries that night. An entire section of the National Guard was won over, horses had been furnished by "some good royalists," a party of nobles were booted and spurred to serve as a protective escort. Louis had been told about the arrangements but had not actually consented to being carried off. Madame Campan went to Antoinette's apartments, where Lx)uis and Antoinette were playing whist with Elisabeth, Provence and his wife. She interrupted them. Louis listened unemotionally to the message that his rescuers awaited him, and went on with his card game. "Tell Monsieur d'Inisdal that I cannot consent to be carried off!" was his only response. Antoinette, no doubt hoping to persuade him to change his mind, packed her traveling cases and told Madame Campan not to go to bed, she might be needed. But in the end nothing happened. Campan, Memoirs, II, 106-8.

6 Padover, p. 206.

7 Campan, Memoirs, II, 375ff.

8 Despite the efforts of some historians to minimize the handicap of the berlin, which was, after all, the usual conveyance for the aristocracy and as such was not conspicuous as a royal carriage, its slow speed was of the greatest importance in determining the outcome of the emigration attempt in June 1791. And this was not just any berlin, but one of exceptional size, according to H^z^cques, who claimed that its hugeness alone awakened suspicion. H6z^ques, p. 352. On the size and ingenious fittings of the vehicle, see Dunlop, p. 217. At a time when any and all aristocrats were being stopped as they passed through provincial towns, and their documents subjected to scrutiny, the use of such a vehicle was clearly unwise, and very likely objections to it were raised—and Antoinette very likely ignored them.

9 Before Joseph's death he wrote Antoinette a loving letter telling her how much he regretted having to leave her in such a cruelly difficult situation. The court put on mourning dress permanently, to save money—but according to Madame Campan, Antoinette's grief at his death "was not excessive." "She reproached him sometimes, though with great moderation, for having adopted several of the principles of the new philosophy." Joseph was a creature of the Elnlightenment, a Voltairean liberal, with an impudent anticlerical streak. He once sent the very Catholic Antoinette an engraving "which represented unfrocked nuns and monks. The first were trying on fashionable dresses; the latter were getting their hair dressed. The engraving was always left in a closet, and

never hung up. The Queen told me to have it taken away . . ." Campan, Memoirs, II, 114 and note. Lettres de Marie Antoinette, II, 163.

10 Thompson, p. 96.

11 Tourzel, Memoirs, I, 261.

12 Fersen, Diary and Correspondence, pp. 94-5; Lettres de Marie Antoinette, II, 234 note; Padover, p. 213.

Chapter 26

1 Campan, Memoirs, II, 382 adds that there were two other servants in the cabriolet, the usher Diet and xhtgargon de toilette Camot. After the royals were returned to Paris Diet and Camot, along with Brunier and de Neuville, were imprisoned for several weeks and then released. Madame Campan's account of the escape attempt in June 1791 was based on what Antoinette told her about it, not on firsthand knowledge; Cam-pan herself was away from court on leave at the time of the journey.

2 Tourzel, Memoirs, I, 329-30.

3 H^^cques, p. 354 asserts that Louis was recognized several times on his journey, though he was only stopped at Varennes. The post master at Chalons, "an honest man," kept his realization to himself.

4 Cobb, Voices, p. 120. Madame Campan, whose account was based on Antoinette's fresh recollection of the journey, gives a slightly different version of what happened. According to her, Louis looked out of the berlin and asked several questions about the road, at which point the post master, struck by the questioner's resemblance to the royal head on the assignats, approached the carriage and made the identification. Cam-pan, Memoirs, II, 385-6.

5 Tourzel, Memoirs, I, 336-7.

6 H^zfecques, p. 355.

7 Campan, Memoirs, II, 386-7.

8 Tourzel, Memoirs, I, 337, notes that the peasants of the Varennes district were afraid of Bouill6 and "begged the King to protect them.*' According to her they "hesitated as to allowing him to continue his journey." But other witnesses stressed the savage anger of the citizenry.

Chapter 27

1 Madame Campan recounts this scene in two sightly different versions. Campan, Memoirs, II, 161-2 and note.

2 Ibid., II, 160.

3 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, II, 307.

Notes jdj

4 Fersen, Diary and Correspondence, p. 123.

5 Campan, Memoirs, II, 170-2. Campan's ignorance of the meaning of the ciphered messages is confirmed in Lettres de Marie Antoinettey II, 239.

6 Campan, Memoirs, II, 170-2.

7 Ibid., II, 153 note. According to Madame Campan, Antoinette blamed an officer named Goguelas, whom Bouill^ had seconded to assist Choiseul, for not taking bold action at Varennes to rescue the royal party despite the King's objections.

8 Campan, Memoirs, II, 179-80.

9 Fersen, Diary and Correspondence, p. 244.

10 This account of what passed between Fersen, Louis and Antoinette is based on Fersen, Diary and Correspondence, pp. 245-9.

Chapter 28

1 Cobb, Voices, pp. 96-7.

2 According to Padover, the first "Guillotine" was constructed by a German mechanic named Schmidt, a harpsichord maker. Padover, p. 290 note.

3 Anonymous account of the events of June 20 in Cobb, VoiceSy p. 145.

4 Tourzel, Memoirs, II, 134-50.

5 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, II, 406.

6 One escape plan Lx)uis agreed to but at the very last minute—on the morning he was to leave, in late July—he backed out. Gouvemeur Morris, II, 476.

7 Tourzel, Memoirs, II, 384.

8 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, II, 421, 409.

9 Tourzel, Memoirs, II, 204.

Chapter 29

1 Thompson, p. 173. Many years later Napoleon, who had watched the massacre from a safe vantage point in a shop window, recalled it with dread. Not in all his subsequent years in battle, he wrote, did he ever see such slaughter.

2 Campan, Memoirs, II, 233-4.

3 Tourzel, Memoirs, II, 217.

4 Maxwell, p. 170.

tality and humanity. In the clerk's office of the prison a court was set up, the prisoners were assembled in the courtyard, with "a great crowd of men of blood," badly clothed, half drunk and menacing. But there were among them some "honest men," one of whom told the noblewoman that he had seen to it that her daughter, who was in prison with her, would be spared. As Madame de Tourzel watched in horror, all the prisoners who were convicted were "massacred without mercy," going to their deaths with terror-stricken faces, sobbing and imploring their executioners for mercy.

After four hours of mortal agony, she presented herself before the Tribunal, which was impressed by her calm and by her fearless retorts to their questions. The court voted to liberate her, whereupon the same men who had been ready to kill her, she wrote, "threw themselves upon me to embrace me and congratulate me on having escaped the impending danger." They escorted her to a safe house in Paris, and even returned on the following day to assure themselves that she was well, and to warn her to leave the city lest the advance of the allied armies put her in renewed jeopardy. Tourzel, Memoirs^ II, 260-9.

6 Campan, Memoirs^ II, 217.

7 M. Clery, Journal de ce qui s'est passe a la Tour du Temple pendant la captivite de Louis XVI roi de France (Lx)ndon, 1798), pp. 92-3.

8 Ibid., 139-44.

Chapter 30

1 There are many accounts of Louis XVFs execution, and they do not agree in details. Contemporary prints and drawings also differ from one another. Monarchist or revolutionary bias creates distortions in the accounts of eyewitnesses, who were eager to ennoble or humiliate the royal victim. I have tried to reconcile the disparate narratives, relying in particular on the recollections of Edgeworth, the story as Gouvemeur Morris heard it from others, the narratives of various English and French eyewitnesses and David P. Jordan, The King's Trial: Louis XVI vs. the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1981), pp. 217-21.

2 One of the sadder stories of Antoinette's later life was her relative neglect of her daughter. Madame Campan wrote that Antoinette began to treat Ther^se as her own mother had treated her. Their temperaments were very different. As a young child, Th6r^se had been called "Mousseline la Serieuse," and her natural gravity and, one suspects, sensitivity, must have contrasted with her mother's vivacious, outgoing and rather coarse-fibered personality. It was understandable that as heir to the throne the dauphin should receive more attention than his sister, but

Th^r^se seems to have been put into the role of a background figure to a greater extent than was consistent with her position as Madame Royale. Now in the late spring of 1793 she voluntarily became something of a night nurse to her often hysterical mother and troubled brother, even though she herself was in pain from a bad leg. Tourzel, Memoirs^ II, 300; Thompson, p. 227.

Antoinette told Madame de Tourzel—though she apparently said nothing to her daughter—that she and Louis wanted the Princess to marry Artois's son, the Due d^Angoul^me, "in spite of her extreme youth." In her imagination Antoinette had done a good deal of planning about the wedding, even down to the "minor arrangements." Years later, of course, Ther^se did marry the Duke, fulfilling her parents' wishes. Tourzel, Memoirs, II, 316-17.

3 Richard Cobb, "The Revolutionary Mentality in France 1793-4," History, XLII (1957), 182-3, citing Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror During the French Revolution. Greer has shown that a high percentage of the twenty-seven or twenty-eight hundred victims of the Terror were former servants and skilled artisans in the luxury trades—barbers, engravers, fan-makers and so on. Among the guillotine's victims was a refugee named Michel living in Bercy—Antoinette's former coachman.

4 By one estimate, some 2,250 were acquitted in Paris. G)bb, VoiceSy p. 179.

5 Under the law of March 29, 1793, armed rebels were shot, not guillotined. In all, some 35,000-40,000 people were executed in the French provinces during 1793 and 1794, far more than lost their lives in Paris during the Terror.

Chapter 31

1 G. Lenotre, La captivite et la Mort de Marie-Antoinette (Paris, 1910), pp. 230-1.

2 "The grief, the bad air, the lack of exercise altered the health of the Queen," Rosalie Lamorli^re wrote. "Her blood warmed, she experienced great hemorrhages. I used to be aware of this; she secretly asked me for linen rags, and often I cut up my chemises and put the rags under her bolster." Lenotre, pp. 245-6.

3 Lenotre, p. 257. Albid., 198.

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