NOW THE JOINT HAD BEEN WELL LARDED and the public prosecutor could begin the roasting. On 12th October 1793, Marie Antoinette was summoned to the big council chamber for her preliminary examination. Opposite to her sat Fouquier-Tinville, Herman his assessor and a few clerks. The Queen sat alone. She had no defender, no assistant, only the gendarme who kept watch over her.
But, during these many weeks of solitude, Marie Antoinette had rallied her forces. Danger had taught her to collect her thoughts, to speak eloquently and, better still, to be silent when silence was preferable. Her answers were surprisingly vigorous, and at the same time cautious and shrewd. Not for a moment did she lose composure. Even the most foolish or most mischievous questions failed to disturb her equanimity. At the close of her life, Marie Antoinette came to realise the responsibilities attaching to a great position. In this dark room of audience, she knew that she must show herself to be the true queen she had failed to be in the glittering hall at Versailles. Her responses here and at the Revolutionary Tribunal were given, not to a pettifogging lawyer whom hunger had driven to declare himself a Red and who had been lucky enough to be appointed public prosecutor, not to these cavalry sergeants and scriveners decked out as judges, but to the only genuine and sincere judge—history. “When will you, at last, become that which you really are?” had been the words written to her despairingly two decades earlier by her mother Maria Theresa. Now, on the edge of the tomb, Marie Antoinette began, through a surge of internal energies, to attain the dignity which heretofore had only been bestowed upon her by externals.
To the formal question, “What is your name?” she answered loudly and clearly: “Marie Antoinette of Lorraine and Austria, widow of Louis Capet, sometime King of the French, thirty-eight years of age.” Meticulously determined to observe the outward formalities of legal procedure, Fouquier-Tinville went on to ask, as if he did not know, where she had been living at the time of her arrest. Without a trace of sarcasm, the Queen informed the public prosecutor that she had never been arrested, but had been removed from the care of the National Assembly and taken to the Temple. Then followed the more important questions, an accusation drafted in the emotional style of the day. She had, before the Revolution, had political relationships with the “King of Bohemia and Hungary”, with the result that she had “in a terrible way” embarrassed the finances of France, “the fruits of the sweat of the people, dissipating them for her pleasures and intrigues with the collusion of nefarious ministers of state”. She had “sent millions to the Emperor, funds to be used against the people which had nourished her”. Since the Revolution began, she had conspired against France, had entered into negotiations with foreign agents, had induced her husband the King to exercise the veto. Marie Antoinette categorically denied these charges. But it was not until Herman brought an accusation which was very clumsily worded that the dialogue became acrimonious.
“It was you who taught Louis Capet the art of that profound dissimulation wherewith, too long, he deceived the good people of France, which never believed that wickedness and perfidy could be carried to such a pitch.”
To this tirade, Marie Antoinette answered composedly:
“It is true that the people has been deceived, cruelly deceived, but not by my husband nor by myself.”
“By whom, then, has the people been deceived?”
“By those who had an interest in deceiving it, whereas it was not our interest to deceive it.”
At this ambiguous reply, Herman pricked up his ears. He hope to extract from the Queen an answer which might be interpreted as hostile to the Republic.
“Who, then, in your opinion, are the persons whose interest it was to deceive the people?”
Marie Antoinette was not to be caught in this trap. She said she did not know. Her own interest had been to enlighten the people and not to deceive it.
Herman scented the irony underlying the rejoinder, and angrily exclaimed:
“You have not given a plain answer to my question.”
Still the Queen stood firmly on the defensive, saying:
“I would answer in plain terms if I knew the names of the persons concerned.”
After this first broil, the proceedings became more concrete. The accused was asked about the flight to Varennes. She answered cautiously, being careful to avoid anything that might incriminate her hidden friends, whom the prosecution wished to involve in the trial. It was not until Herman’s next accusatory question that she responded with a vigorous parry.
“Never for a moment have you ceased to wish for the destruction of liberty; you wanted to reign at any cost, and to remount the steps of the throne over the corpses of the patriots?”
To this rigmarole the Queen replied that she and her husband had no need to “remount” the steps of the throne, since they were already established on it, and could desire nothing other than the happiness of France.
Now Herman grew more aggressive. Having realised that he could not break down the ramparts of Marie Antoinette’s caution, that he could not upset her equanimity, that he could not from her answers extract ‘materials’ for the trial, he began to assail her with more vehement accusations. She had corrupted and intoxicated the Flemish regiment, had plied the soldiers with drink, had been in correspondence with foreign courts, was responsible for the outbreak of the war and had been instrumental in bringing about the Convention of Pillnitz. The Queen, however, corrected her accuser’s facts. The declaration of war had been a decision of the National Assembly and not of her late husband. As for corrupting the Flemish regiment, she had only walked twice from end to end of the hall in which the soldiers were dining.
Herman, however, had kept his most dangerous questions for the last, those which were designed to make Marie Antoinette repudiate her own sentiments if she wished to avoid expressing hostility to the Republic. What now ensued was a sort of catechism on constitutional law.
“What interest have you in the armed forces of the Republic?”
“The happiness of France is what I desire above all.”
“Do you think that kings are necessary for the happiness of the people?”
“An individual cannot decide that matter.”
“No doubt you are sorry that your son should have lost a throne which he might have mounted had not the people, awaking at length to its rights, destroyed the throne?”
“I shall never regret my son’s loss of anything, should his loss prove to be the gain of his country.”
It will be seen that the examiner for the prosecution was not making much headway! Marie Antoinette, indeed, had shown a Jesuitical skill in her answer to the last question. When speaking of her son and of France she had said that the latter was “his” country. It was “his” country just as it was that of any other Frenchman, so that, in using the pronoun, she had said nothing derogatory to the Republic, and yet, at the same time, the word could be taken as implying that it was the Dauphin’s country in another sense—she had not, even in her imminent peril, sacrificed what to her was the most sacred thing in the world, the boy’s right to succeed to his father’s throne.
After this last crossing of rapiers, the preliminary enquiry was soon closed. The accused was asked if she wanted to name a defender for the main trial. Marie Antoinette replied that she did not know any counsel, and agreed that one or two advocates should be appointed on her behalf by the court. She knew well enough that this matter was of no importance, since at the present juncture there would hardly be forthcoming in France anyone bold enough to attempt a serious defence of the woman who had been its Queen. Whoever should dare to say a word in her favour would be likely, within a few days, to find himself in the dock.
Now that the semblance of legality had been given by this preliminary hearing, Fouquier-Tinville, who was a stickler for the formalities, could proceed to draft the indictment. His pen moved swiftly over the paper. He prepared such documents in considerable numbers day by day, and practice makes perfect. Though he had been no more than a petty provincial lawyer until the Revolution brought him to Paris and promotion, he felt that when the guillotining of an ex-queen was in question a sublimer tone was requisite than if the victim had been no more than some seamstress or milliner who had been foolhardy enough to shout, “Vive le Roi!” The indictment, therefore, opened in stilted terms:
“An examination of the relevant documents has shown that, like the Messalinas, Brunhildes, Fredegonds, Medicis, who used to be spoken of as queens of France and whose names for ever odious will never be effaced from the pages of history, Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis Capet, has, ever since her arrival in France, been for the French a curse and a bloodsucker.”
After this historical ‘howler’ (it will be remembered that in the days of Fredegond and Brunhilde there was as yet no kingdom of France) there followed the accusations which have previously been cited. The ex-Queen had entered into political relations with a man who passed by the name of “King of Bohemia and Hungary”; she had sent millions to the Emperor; she had prompted the “orgy” when the Flemish regiment dined at Versailles; she had caused the civil war; she had been instrumental in the butchering of patriots; she had betrayed the French plan of campaign to the enemies of France.
Next came Hébert’s accusation, though that firebrand’s wording had been toned down a little. Marie Antoinette was “so perverted and so familiar with all crimes that, forgetting she was a mother and ignoring the limitations prescribed by the laws of nature, she had not been afraid to practise with Louis Charles Capet, her son, indecencies (avowed by the latter) whose very idea and whose mere name arouse a shudder”.
Now there came a new and surprising charge. “She actually pushed perfidy and dissimulation so far as to print and distribute … works in which she herself was depicted in a most undesirable light … in order to lay a false scent and to persuade the foreign powers that she was being grossly maligned by the French.”
Thus according to Fouquier-Tinville, the Queen had herself been the true author or disseminator of the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois’s and many other pamphlets in which she was described as a lesbian.
These charges having been brought against her, Marie Antoinette was no longer merely a prisoner under supervision but had become an accused person.
On 13th October, this forensic masterpiece (when the ink was hardly dry) was delivered to Chauveau-Lagarde, who had been appointed defending counsel, and who went forthwith to the Conciergerie. The lawyer and the prisoner read the indictment together, but it was only the former who was amazed and even unnerved by its venomous tone. Marie Antoinette, whom the preliminary enquiry had led to expect nothing better, remained calm. Chauveau-Lagarde, however, a conscientious man, declared it would be impossible in one night to prepare an adequate defence against so confused a miscellany of charges. There was a chaos of documents to scrutinize and set in order. He therefore urged the Queen to demand an adjournment of three days, which would give him time to base his speech for the defence upon sifted materials and closely scrutinized exhibits.
“To whom must I apply for an adjournment?” asked Marie Antoinette.
“To the Convention.”
“No, no, never.”
Chauveau-Lagarde pressed his point.
“In this matter, pride is out of place, and you should not allow it to prevent your grasping at a possible advantage. It is, in fact, your duty to save your life if you can, not only for your own sake, but for that of your children.”
At this appeal, for her children’s sake, the Queen gave way, and wrote as follows to the president of the Convention:
“Citizen President, the Citizens Tronson and Chauveau, assigned me by the Tribunal as defenders, have pointed out to me that only today have they received their instructions. My trial is fixed for tomorrow, and they declare that it will be impossible for them in so brief a time to make a proper examination of all the documents bearing upon the case. I owe it to my children to do everything in my power to justify their mother’s conduct. My defenders ask for three days’ postponement, and I hope that the Convention will grant them.”
This document gives additional proof of the spiritual change which had taken place in Marie Antoinette. She who, for most of the twenty-odd years in which she had been Dauphiness and then Queen of France, had shown no talent either for writing or for diplomacy, was, in this last extremity, able to write well and with a queenly dignity. Although she had to appeal to the Convention as the supreme authority in France, she did not recognise that authority by penning a request in her own name. She applied as directed by her defenders, and expressed a hope instead of making a petition.
The Convention vouchsafed no answer. The Queen’s death had long since been decided on. Of what avail, then, to spin out the legal formalities. The trial began next morning at eight, and everyone knew how it would end.