WHEN HATRED HAD BREATHED its venom into her very face, when she had seen the pikemen of the Revolution brandishing their weapons in her private room, when she had learnt the impotence of the National Assembly and the enmity of the mayor and the town councillors of Paris, Marie Antoinette knew that her fate and that of her family were sealed unless help came speedily from without. Nothing but a prompt and overwhelming victory of the Prussians and Austrians could save their lives. True, in this last hour a possibility of escape opened. Old friends and unexpected new ones counselled flight and were ready to assist. General Lafayette was prepared, on the fourteenth of July when there were to be anniversary celebrations in the Champ de Mars, to head a detachment of cavalry, surround the members of the royal family and conduct them safely out of the town. But Marie Antoinette, who still regarded Lafayette as one of the prime originators of disaster, would rather perish than entrust her children, her husband and herself to this unduly sanguine rescuer.
For nobler reasons she rejected another proposal, that of the Landgravine of Hesse-Darmstadt, who planned to get her away from the palace—alone, since it was she who ran the greatest risk by staying on in the capital. “No, Princess,” she replied. “Though I am most grateful to you for your offers, I cannot accept them. The rest of my life will be consecrated to my duties, and to those dear ones whose misfortunes I share, and who, whatever people may say, deserve every credit for the courage with which they are trying to maintain their position … My only hope, the only one I allow myself to cherish, is that a day may come when what we are now doing and suffering will redound to the happiness of our children. Farewell, Princess. They have deprived me of my all, excepting only my heart, which (do not doubt it) will continue to be filled with affection for you. The sole disaster I should find it impossible to bear would be that you should fail to believe me in this respect.”
The foregoing was one of the first letters which Marie Antoinette wrote with an eye to the judgement of posterity. At bottom she was fully assured that the advance of the Revolution could not be stayed, and her one remaining wish, therefore, was to keep her head high, to maintain a confident bearing to the last. Perhaps she already had an unconscious longing for a speedy and heroic death, instead of the tedious agony of sinking into a quicksand. On the fourteenth of July, when for the last time she attended the popular festival in the Champ de Mars to commemorate the storming of the Bastille, she refused to wear a coat of mail beneath her dress, whereas the cautious Louis had adopted this precaution. At night she continued to sleep unguarded, although once, at least, a suspicious figure had appeared in her bedchamber. She had ceased, now, to go out walking in the gardens of the palace, for even this limited exercise was impossible without her hearing the strains of the popular song:
Madame Véto avait promis
De faire égorger tout Paris.
(Madame Veto had promised to have all the throats in Paris cut.) She slept alone, I said, but, as a matter of fact, she now slept little. Whenever a church clock struck, a shudder ran through the palace, for it might well be the first note of the tocsin that would sound for the long-since planned assault upon the Tuileries. Kept informed by its spies as to what was going on in the clubs, the secret societies and the faubourgs, the court knew full well that it was likely to be a question of no more than a few days until the Jacobins would have recourse to the strong hand. Indeed, the reports of these spies did but betray an open secret. More and more vociferously, more and more rancorously, were the journals of Marat and Hébert clamouring for the King’s deposition.
The horror of the last days of dread expectation is reflected in the Queen’s letters to Fersen. Cries they may be termed rather than letters, passionate cries of alarm, shrill and almost inarticulate like those of a hunted beast. It was hard enough, now, to smuggle any communications out of the Tuileries, for the servants in the palace were no longer to be trusted, while every window and every door was watched by the revolutionists. Hidden in boxes of chocolate, rolled up beneath hat brims, penned in sympathetic ink and in cipher (seldom written in plain script), Marie Antoinette’s last letters were composed in such a fashion that their interception could work harm to no one. They referred, ostensibly, to generalities of trifling importance, to imaginary affairs. The messages the Queen really wanted to convey were generally couched in the third person as well as being in cipher. Swiftly, ever more swiftly, these last cries of distress followed hard upon one another. Even before the twentieth of June, she had written: “Your friends … believe the re-establishment of their fortunes to be impossible, or at any rate the prospect to be exceedingly remote. Give them, if you can, some consolation in this respect; they need it! Day by day their situation grows more dreadful.” On 23rd June came a yet more urgent warning: “Your friend is in the utmost danger. His illness advances in the most alarming fashion. The doctors no longer know what to do. If you hope to see him again, you must hasten. Keep his relatives informed concerning his desperate plight.” The temperature continued to rise. Here are extracts from a missive under date 26th June: “Nothing but a prompt crisis can bring him release, and as yet there is no sign of anything of the kind, so that we are reduced to despair. Make the position known to those who have any dealings with him, for this may enable them to take the necessary precautions. Time presses.”
While uttering these cries of alarm, she often conceived a new fear. Devoted to Ferson as she was, the unhappy woman (like all true lovers) was afraid that she was causing undue distress to the man dearer to her than all the world. Even in her utmost anxiety and need, Marie Antoinette thought less of her own evil fate than of the perturbation her anxious appeals would cause in the object of her affection. “Our position is horrible, but do not be too much disquieted about it. I keep up my courage, and there is something within which tells me that we shall soon be happy, shall soon be rescued. This thought sustains me … Farewell! When shall we meet again in tranquil circumstances?” That was written on 3rd July. A little later, the following was dispatched: “Adieu. Do your utmost to quicken the sending of the promised help … Take care of yourself for our sake, and do not be uneasy about us.” Then the letters follow in brief succession. “Tomorrow [22nd July] there are expected eight hundred men from Marseilles, and it is said that in a week thereafter they will have got enough force together to carry out their plans.” Three days later she wrote: “Tell Monsieur de Mercy that the lives of the King and the Queen are in the utmost danger, and that a single day’s delay may cause incalculable disaster … The band of assassins is being continually swelled by new recruits.” In the last letter ever received by Fersen from the Queen, under date 1st August 1792, Marie Antoinette described the overwhelming risks of the situation with the clairvoyance of despair.
The King’s life has obviously been threatened for a long time, and so has the Queen’s. The arrival of about six hundred men from Marseilles and of a number of deputies from the various Jacobin clubs has increased our anxiety, which, unfortunately, is only too well grounded. All kinds of precautions are being taken to safeguard Their Majesties, but the assassins are continually prowling round the palace; the passions of the populace are being artificially inflamed; some of the National Guards are disaffected, while the rest of them lack strength and courage … For the moment our main thought must be to escape dagger thrusts, and to defeat the plans of the conspirators who swarm around the trembling throne. It is a long time since the factieux have taken the trouble to hide their plan of annihilating the royal family. At the two last nocturnal meetings, the only differences of opinion concerned the best means to employ for this purpose. An earlier letter will have shown you how important it is to gain even as much as four-and-twenty hours. Today I need merely repeat that affirmation, while adding that unless help arrives promptly, no one but Providence can save the King and his family.
Marie Antoinette’s lover received these missives in Brussels, and we can imagine his despair. From morning till night he was doing his utmost to overcome the inertia, the vacillation, of the kings, the military commanders and the ambassadors. He wrote letter after letter, heaped visit upon visit; with the energy of justified impatience, he urged prompt military action, a rapid advance of the troops. But the Duke of Brunswick, the commander-in-chief, was a soldier of the old school, one of those who believed that an advance must be planned in every detail months before it was begun. Slowly, carefully, systematically, in accordance with the art of war he had learnt under Frederick the Great (an art long since obsolete) he posted his troops in the traditional manner, and, with the characteristic arrogance of a soldier, refused to modify his designs by so much as a hair’s breadth in accordance with the wishes of politicians or other outsiders. The mobilisation should take place precisely as he had arranged, and in no other way. He declared that he would not be ready to cross the French frontier before the middle of August, but that thereafter everything would go strictly according to schedule (it has ever been the dream of pigheaded generals that they will be able to carry out their plans of campaign with the precision of a sham-fight, regardless of the doings of the enemy), that thereafter there would be a quick and steady advance to Paris.
Fersen, however, racked by the cries of anguish from the Tuileries, knew that the middle of August would be too late. Something must be done to save the Queen. In the delirium of passion, the lover decided upon a course which was to prove fatal to his beloved, accelerating the attack on the Tuileries by the very measure which he had designed to hinder it. For a long time, Marie Antoinette had been asking the allies to issue a manifesto. Her idea—a sound one—was that in this manifesto they should try to draw a clear distinction between the cause of the republicans, of the Jacobins, on the one hand, and that of the French nation on the other, thus encouraging the well-disposed (those who in her sense were the well-disposed) elements of France to strike terror into the hearts of the ‘gueux’—the rascaldom. She urged that the foreign powers must sedulously avoid interfering with the internal concerns of France. “Be careful,” she said, “not to say too much about the King, and not to arouse the impression that your main purpose is to give him support.” She dreamt of a pronunciamento which would at one and the same time be a declaration of friendship for the French people and a menace to the terrorists.
But the unhappy Fersen, with terror in his own soul, aware that it might be ages before effective military help came from the allies, insisted that the manifesto should be couched in the harshest terms. He wrote a draft, got a friend to convey it to headquarters—and, as ill-luck would have it, this draft was accepted! The notorious manifesto of the allied troops to the French was as domineering as if the Duke of Brunswick’s regiments had already achieved a victorious advance to the gates of Paris; it contained all the errors which the Queen, better informed regarding the situation, had hoped to avoid. There were repeated references to the sacred person of the Most Christian King; the National Assembly was berated for having illegally seized the reins of government; the French soldiers were hectoringly told to come over forthwith to the side of Louis, their legitimate monarch; the town of Paris was threatened with the severest military reprisals, with complete destruction, with “an ever-memorable vengeance”, in the event of the Tuileries being stormed by the mob; a general who was essentially pusillanimous spoke in the thundering tones of a Tamerlane before a shot had been fired.
The result of these paper threats was alarming. Even those who up till now had been loyal to the King became ardent republicans as soon as they learnt how clear their monarch was to the enemies of France; that a victory of the foreign troops would annihilate the acquirements of the Revolution; that the Bastille would have been stormed to no avail; that the Oath of the Tennis Court would have been taken to no purpose; and that what countless Frenchmen had sworn on the Champ de Mars would be deemed invalid. By this crazy menace, Fersen’s hand, the hand of the Queen’s lover, threw a lit candle into a powder-magazine, and a mad challenge caused the wrath of twenty million people to explode.
During the last days of July the text of Brunswick’s unhappy manifesto became known in the French capital. The allied threat to raze Paris to the ground should the Tuileries be stormed was regarded by the populace as a good reason for attack. Preparations were instantly begun, and the only reason for delay was that it was thought better to wait until the six hundred Reds arrived from Marseilles. On 6th August they marched into Paris, stern and resolute enthusiasts tanned by the southern sun, stepping bravely in time to a new marching song that within a few weeks would resound throughout the land—the Marseillaise, which in an inspired hour a usually uninspired officer had composed as a hymn for the Revolution. Everything was now ready for the last thrust against the crumbling monarchy. The battering ram could be swung. “Allons, enfants de la patrie!”—Come, children of the fatherland!