NEVER IN THE ANCIENT REALM OF FRANCE had the seed ripened so swiftly as in this summer of the year 1789. The golden grain swelled on the tall stalks, and still more swiftly, manured with blood, sprouted the impatient seed of the Revolution. With a stroke of the pen, an end was put to the neglect of decades, to the injustice of centuries; other Bastilles were stormed, the fortresses in which the rights of the French people had been prisoned by their kings. On the fourth of August, amid universal jubilation, the ancient (though invisible) stronghold of feudalism fell. The nobles had to renounce corvées and tithes, the princes of the Church must forgo their rents and their revenues from the salt tax. Serfdom was abolished. The third estate became supreme. The press was declared free. The Rights of Man were proclaimed. During this one summer, all the dreams of Jean Jacques Rousseau were fulfilled. In the meeting place of the Assembly, the windows rattled, now because of shouts of exultation, and now because of the disputes among the excited deputies. A hundred paces away the buzzing as of a great hive of bees was plainly audible. A thousand paces further yet, in the huge palace of Versailles, the chillness of dismay prevailed. With alarm the court looked from the windows towards this noisy guest who, though summoned only to give advice, had arrogated the role of ruler. It was like the fiend conjured up by the magician’s apprentice. How was he to be sent home again? How could the spectre be laid? The King, in his perplexity, could get no help from his councillors, whose advice was contradictory. To Marie Antoinette and to Louis it seemed best to wait until the storm had blown itself out. Let them remain quietly in the background; let them gain time; then, in the end, all would come right.
But the Revolution had to make headway, since otherwise it would be in danger of becoming silted up—for a revolution is necessarily a movement, a flow. Stagnation would be its doom, retrogression would put an end to it; it must demand more and ever more concessions in order to maintain itself; it must conquer if it would avoid being conquered. The drums for this unceasing march were beaten by the newspapers, the guttersnipes of the revolution, which ran, shouting ecstatically, in front of the real army. Freedom had been given to the written and the spoken word, and freedom, in its first exuberance, is always fierce and unmeasured. Ten, twenty, thirty, fifty journals appeared. Mirabeau founded one of his own, so did Desmoulins, so did Brissot, so did Loustalot, so did Marat, and since, on the hunt for readers, they outvied one another in the extravagance of bourgeois patriotism, their clamour swelled into a roar which was heard throughout the country.
Each of them tried to be louder, to be more savage and unrestrained than the others. The louder, the better; make the court the target of universal hatred! The King was planning treason; the government was interfering with the supplies of grain; foreign regiments were being sent for to suppress the Revolution and to dissolve the Assembly by force; a new massacre of Saint Bartholomew was imminent. Wake up, citizens! Wake up, patriots! Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan! By day and by night, the newspapers beat the big drum, spreading fear, distrust, rage, bitterness, into millions of hearts. And behind the drummers there was already standing the hitherto invisible army of the French people, equipped with pikes and sabres, and inspired with overwhelming wrath.
For the King, things were going too quickly; for the champions of the Revolution, too slowly. Louis, being cautious and stout, could not keep step with the vehement advance of the new ideas. Since Versailles continued to hesitate and to postpone, so Paris must rush forwards. The cry of the revolutionary newspapers was that there must be an end of this tedious parleying, this insufferable bargaining between King and people. “You have a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand fists; there are muskets and cannon in the arsenals; get them out, ready for use; fetch the King and the Queen from Versailles; take your destinies into your own hands!” At the headquarters of the Revolution, in the Duke of Orléans’s abode, the Palais Royal, the word was given. Everything had been prepared, and the Marquis de Huruge, one of the deserters from the court, was ready to command the expedition.
But there were underground passages communicating between the palace of Versailles and the metropolis. Patriots in the clubs were kept informed by the servants, whom they had bribed, concerning all that went on in the palace, and the palace, in its turn, had secret agents in Paris and knew everything about the proposed attack. Versailles decided to take a strong line, and since French soldiers were not to be trusted to act against their fellow-citizens, a Flemish regiment was summoned for the protection of the palace. On 1st October, the troops marched from their cantonments to Versailles, where the court had prepared to give them a cordial reception. The great opera hall had been arranged for a banquet. Although Paris was suffering from a scarcity which bordered upon famine, there was to be no lack here of wine and good food. Loyalty, like love, often depends upon the stomach. In order to stimulate the soldiers’ enthusiasm for their ruler, the King and the Queen, the latter leading the Dauphin by the hand, visited the banqueting hall. It was an unprecedented honour!
Marie Antoinette had never learnt the useful art of winning people to her cause by shrewdness, by calculation or by flattery. Still, nature had equipped her, both in mind and body, with a considerable measure of dignity which produced a good impression upon anyone who saw her for the first time. It was fleeting, but none could escape it. On the occasion of this entry, she looked both dignified and lovable, a handsome woman, only thirty-four years of age. Officers and men rose from their seats, drew their swords and raised a shout of welcome to King Louis and his wife. The Queen walked up and down the room. She wore a bewitching smile. Like her autocratic mother, like her brother, like almost all the Habsburgs—like the Austrian aristocracy in general—she had an extraordinarily affable manner, and, notwithstanding her invincible arrogance, she could be courteous and forthcoming to ordinary folk in the most natural way possible, without producing in them any feeling that she was ‘condescending’. It was long since she had heard an enthusiastic “Vive la Reine!” and the sound gladdened her heart. The sight of this gracious, this truly royal lady, as, accompanied by her children, she moved round the great banqueting table and behaved as if she had herself been the guest of those whom she was entertaining, aroused a rapture of loyalty both in officers and in men. At this moment, every one of them was ready to die for Marie Antoinette. The Queen, too, was profoundly moved. The wine of so hearty a welcome was intoxicating. It restored her confidence. France still knew the meaning of loyalty; the throne was still secure.
On 2nd and 3rd October, however, the drums of the patriotic journals were rattling once more. Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan; the Queen and the court were scheming to assassinate the people. They had made the soldiers drunken with red wine that these armed men might shed the red blood of fellow-citizens; servile officers had trampled upon the tricolour; lickspittle songs had been sung—and the mischief had been wrought by the challenging smiles of the Queen. Patriots, have a care! Paris is about to be attacked; regiments are already on the march. To arms, citizens, for the last decisive struggle! Assemble, patriots. Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan!
Two days later, on 5th October, there was a tumult in Paris. There was a tumult, and how it came to pass remains one of the impenetrable mysteries of the French Revolution. For this tumult, spontaneous though it may seem to have been at the first glance, was in truth remarkably well organised, was a political master-stroke. The shot was fired from the right quarter and hit the bull’s-eye. Obviously, then, cunning brains and practised hands were at work. The most outstanding feature of the affair was worthy of the able psychologist Choderlos de Laclos, who, in the Palais Royal, was directing the Duke of Orléans’s campaign. The King was to be brought from Versailles to Paris, not by an army of men, but by an army of women. Men who undertake such a deed can be shot down as rebels. Any well-drilled soldier will fire at a man upon the word of command. But when women play a leading part in a popular riot, the authorities look upon them only as poor creatures driven by despair. The sharpest bayonet finds the armour of a woman’s soft breast invulnerable. Besides, those who were fomenting the revolt knew that a man so timid and sentimental as Louis would never give the order to fire upon women. The first move in the game, therefore, was to fan the excitement to fever-heat. Next (and here again we do not know through whose instrumentality) the supply of bread to Paris must be held up for two days, since nothing can compete with hunger as a stimulant of popular wrath. Thirdly, when all was ripe, let women, not men, take the field!
It was, in fact, a young woman (and rumour declares that she was wearing valuable rings) who, on the morning of 5th October, broke into a guard room and seized a drum. Behind her, in a trice, there ranged themselves a vast number of women, clamouring for bread. The riot had begun, and speedily men dressed up as women mingled with the crowd, to give it the prearranged impetus in the direction of the Hôtel de Ville. Within half an hour, the place had been stormed, pistols and pikes and even two cannon had been seized, and then there suddenly appeared as if from nowhere a leader, Maillard by name. This young revolutionist took command of the disorderly and chaotic mass, organised it into an army, and incited it to march on Versailles—ostensibly to demand bread, though really in order to bring the King to Paris. Too late, as usual, Lafayette, commanding officer of the National Guard, appeared upon the scene, mounted on his white charger. (It was always the fate of this distinguished laggard, sincere and honourable, but maladroit, to turn up the day after the fair!) His duty of course was—and he earnestly tried to accomplish it—to prevent the march on Versailles; his men, however, would not obey orders. There was nothing left for him but to lead the National Guard as rear-column of the army of women, thus giving revolt a cloak of legality. Enthusiastic champion of liberty though he was, he knew that today he was playing a sorry part. He rode gloomily westwards in the trail of the revolutionists, symbol of cool and calculating reason fruitlessly endeavouring to overtake (after having vainly attempted to control) the splendidly illogical passion of an elemental storm.
Not until noon did the court of Versailles hear a word about the approach of the thousand-headed danger. In accordance with his daily custom, the King had had one of his hunters saddled and had ridden off into the woods of Meudon, and the Queen had early in the morning, unaccompanied, walked over to Trianon. Why should she stay at Versailles, the huge palace whence those who had been her most intimate friends had long since fled or been sent to exile, and where, close at hand, in the National Assembly, day after day the ‘factieux’ were volleying new and ever more hateful accusations against her? She was weary of this bitterness, of this struggle in the void; she was weary of human beings, and weary of her queenship. She would get a few hours’ rest and quiet, away from political chatter, in the lovely park where the foliage was beginning to assume the warm tints of the fall. She would pick the last flowers in the beds before chill winter came to destroy them; perhaps she would feed the chickens, and the Chinese goldfish in the little pond. After that she would rest, remote from the turmoil and disorder, would do nothing, would want to do nothing, but sit at ease in the grotto, simply attired, with an open book beside her on the bench, open but unread—her heart attuned to the weariness which overcomes nature in autumn.
There sat the Queen upon the stone bench in the grotto (forgetting, perhaps, that it used to be called ‘the Grotto of Love’), when she saw one of her pages coming, a letter in his hand. She went out to meet him. The letter was from Saint-Priest, and it reported that the mob was marching on Versailles. The Queen would do well to return to the palace instantly. Snatching up her hat, wrapping her cloak round her, she hastened thither with her youthful and springy gait—so swiftly, one may presume, that she never looked back towards the Little Trianon and its ‘natural’ landscape which had been constructed with such careful art. How could she foresee that never again would she see these pleasant meadows, these gentle hillocks, with Cupid’s Temple and the pond; that she was bidding farewell for ever to her Hameau, her Trianon?
At Versailles Marie Antoinette found the nobles and the ministers of state in hopeless perplexity. So far, nothing but vague rumours of the march from Paris had arrived, brought by a servant who had managed to get away in advance of the mob. Subsequent messengers had been intercepted by the women. Now at length came a horseman, who sprang from the saddle and ran hot-foot up the marble staircase—Fersen. At the first tidings of peril, he had galloped off to Versailles, circumventing the army of women—the “eight thousand Judiths” as Desmoulins emotionally called them—determined to be at the Queen’s side in the moment of danger. At length the King also appeared at the council. Messengers had found him in the forest close to the Porte de Châtillon, and had had to disturb him at his favourite amusement. That evening his diary would record with annoyance that he had had a poor day’s hunting, with the comment “interrupted by events”.
Well, he had to return, disconcerted and alarmed, and at length, after possible measures of defence had been neglected, and when, in the general confusion, no one had thought of blocking the progress of the revolutionary vanguard by closing the bridge at Sèvres, a council was held. There were still two hours; there was still time for energetic action. One of the ministers proposed that the King should mount his horse and lead a troop of dragoons and the Flemish regiment against the undisciplined masses; the mere sight of him thus attended would compel the horde of women to retreat. Those of a more cautious temperament, however, held that it would be better for the King and the Queen to leave Versailles immediately and to betake themselves to Rambouillet, for this withdrawal to a safe distance would countermine the crafty and malicious attack upon the throne. But Louis, hesitant as ever, found it impossible to make up his mind either to one expedient or to the other. It was his invariable practice to let events take their course instead of trying to guide them.
The Queen stood, biting her lips, amid the perplexed men, not one of whom was really and truly a man. Her instinct told her that forcible resistance would be successful, that the mob would scatter, terror-stricken, at the first shedding of blood. “Toute cette révolution n’est qu’une suite de la peur”—All this revolution is just a consequence of fear. But how could she take the responsibility for meeting force by force? Below, in the courtyard, the horses had been put to. In an hour the royal family with the ministers of state and the members of the National Assembly, who had sworn to follow the King wherever he went, could be safe at Rambouillet. Still Louis procrastinated, was unwilling to give the sign. His ministers grew more and more urgent, especially Saint-Priest, who said: “Sire, if you let them take you to Paris tomorrow, you will lose your crown.” Necker, who was more interested in maintaining his own popularity than in upholding the monarchy, was opposed to the Rambouillet scheme; so poor Louis, a pendulum devoid of will, swung unceasingly from one side to the other. The hours drew on towards evening, and the horses pawed the ground impatiently, made even more restless by the heavy rain which had begun to fall. For hours the lackeys had been waiting by the carriage doors, and still the council of indecision went on.
At length there came a confused murmur of many voices from the Avenue de Paris. The army of women was close at hand, their skirts drawn up over their heads as a protection against the downpour. Stamping onwards in their thousands, the amazons of the marketplace drew nigh. The vanguard of the Revolution was in Versailles. The opportunity for decisive action, whether by resistance or by flight, had been lost.
Drenched to the skin, cold and hungry, their shoes filled with mud and squelching at every step, the women marched up to the palace. These six hours had been no pleasure trip, even though the drinking saloons on the wayside had been stormed, and the raiders had been able now and again to warm the cockles of their hearts with a tot of brandy. Their voices were hoarse with cold and wet and fatigue as well as with anger, and what they shouted was anything but friendly towards the Queen. Their first visit was to the National Assembly. It had been in session since early that morning, and many of the deputies, those who were doing their best to prepare the way for the Duke of Orléans, were not taken by surprise by this march of the women.
The first demand the newcomers made of the Assembly was for bread, it having been arranged that to begin with not a word was to be said about removing the King to Paris. A deputation of the women was sent into the palace, accompanied by Mounier, the president of the Assembly, and by some of the representatives of the third estate. The six selected women made for the entrance, where the lackeys politely opened the doors for these dressmakers, fishwives and street-walkers. With every conceivable honour the uncanny deputation was escorted up the marble staircase into the halls which, heretofore, had only been open to the blue-bloods of France. Among the deputies who accompanied the president of the National Assembly was a tall, rather corpulent and genial-looking man about whose appearance there was nothing to attract particular attention. His name, however, gives his first encounter with King Louis peculiar significance. It was Dr Guillotin, professor of anatomy at the University of Paris and representative of that city, through whose instrumentality an improved form of the instrument subsequently called by his name was adopted by the revolutionists as a ‘humane killer’.
Good-natured Louis received the ladies in so friendly a fashion that their spokeswoman, a young lady who sold flowers (and probably something more) to the habitués of the Palais Royal, actually fainted from embarrassment. She was sedulously cared for. The worthy father of his country put his arm round the terrified girl, promised the gratified members of the deputation bread in plenty and everything else they wanted, and even placed his own carriages at their disposal to save them the trouble of the long walk back to Paris. Everything seemed to have gone off swimmingly; when the deputation went downstairs, it was received with cries of rage by the general body of the women, who had, meanwhile, been worked upon by the secret agitators among them. Their representatives must have been bribed, or at any rate must have allowed themselves to be fobbed off with lies! “We have not tramped for six hours from Paris, through a cloud-burst, in order to go home again with gnawing stomachs and empty pledges. We shall stay here until we can take back the King and the Queen and the whole band with us to Paris, where we can keep them under close observation and teach them not to play any more tricks on us.” The women crowded into the meeting hall of the National Assembly to sleep there—except for a few of them, professional prostitutes (of whom Thérogine de Méricourt was one). These latter sought custom from among the soldiers of the Flemish regiment. Stragglers of questionable character continued to swell the army at Versailles. Sinister figures, dimly lit by the oil lanterns, prowled round the railings.
On the first floor, the court was still deliberating. Would it not be better, after all, to flee? But how could the carriages make their way through the excited crowd? Too late! Towards midnight, drums were heard in the distance. Lafayette was coming. He, too, paid his first visit to the National Assembly, and his second to the King. Although, with honest devotion, and a profound obeisance, he said: “Sire, I have come to bring you my head in order to save Your Majesty’s,” no one gave him any thanks, least of all Marie Antoinette. The King declared that he no longer desired to leave Versailles or to remove out of touch with the National Assembly. Everything seemed settled. Louis had given his word, Lafayette and the armed forces of the people were on hand to protect him, and so the members of the Assembly went home to bed, while the National Guard and the insurgents sought shelter from the drenching rain in the barracks and the churches, in doorways and under arches. Light after light was extinguished, and Lafayette, after making a final round to inspect his sentries, likewise went to bed, at four in the morning, in the Hôtel de Noailles—although he had pledged himself to watch over the King’s safety. Marie Antoinette and Louis retired to their separate chambers, never dreaming that this was the last night on which they would lay themselves down to sleep at Versailles.