CHAPTER NINETEEN
HER MAJESTY THE PRISONER
“Your Majesty is a prisoner . . . Yes, it’s true. Since Her Majesty no longer has her Guard of Honour, she is a prisoner.”
SECRETARY AUGEARD TO MARIE ANTOINETTE, 7 OCTOBER 1789
“I’m fine; don’t worry.” With this note Marie Antoinette attempted to allay the fears of Count Mercy the day after her arrival in Paris. (The ambassador himself had only been preserved from attack by the fact that he was wearing an overcoat over his ambassadorial silks due to the heavy rains.) If the Queen was bravely reassuring, the King was phlegmatic. In his Journal he summed up the extraordinary day of 6 October 1789 following the devastating night as follows: “Departure for Paris 12.30, visit to the Hôtel de Ville, dine and sleep at the Tuileries.”1
These economical words hardly covered the ordeal suffered by the King of France, the Queen, their two young children, his sister Madame Elisabeth, his brother and sister-in-law the Comte and Comtesse de Provence—and the reputation and authority of the French monarchy. When the cortège arrived at the gates of Paris, it was met by the Mayor, Bailly, who managed an aphoristic reference to history, about the King’s ancestor Henri IV having conquered the city, and now the city had conquered Louis XVI. Matters went better at the Hôtel de Ville. Madame Elisabeth who was present noted how affably the King spoke: “It is always with pleasure and confidence that I find myself amid the worthy inhabitants of my good city of Paris.” When Bailly repeated the royal words, he left out “confidence” but the King made him put it back. As for Marie Antoinette, outwardly she was her usual serene self as though nothing untoward had happened in the last twenty-four hours.2
The scene that greeted them at the Tuileries was, however, hardly likely to inspire the confidence of which the King spoke. Furthermore their familiar royal bodyguards were now removed in favour of the National Guards under La Fayette. It was undoubtedly a prudent move from the point of view of the former’s safety; Marie Antoinette never ceased to mourn those “brave and faithful” men who had died in her defence. But the change increased the feeling of alienation for royalties who had been accustomed to a special kind of security since childhood.
The trouble was that the palace of the Tuileries was both decayed and populated. Begun by Catherine de’ Medici in the sixteenth century, the sprawling structure, overlooking the Seine on the south side, had three pavilions and nearly four hundred rooms; a long gallery built by Henri IV linked it to the Louvre. But by the 1770s there was duckweed growing in the ornamental waters of the gardens, once thought to be the most beautiful in Europe, while prostitutes preferred to ply their trade in the grounds there because they were quieter than those of the Palais-Royal. Most of the interior was dark and depressing, with ancient, faded tapestries and workmen’s ladders everywhere. The King’s grandfather had ignored the Tuileries after a brief visit over forty years ago. Although Marie Antoinette maintained a small pied-à-terre in the royal apartments for late-lasting visits to Paris, the real inhabitants were the royal servants and their relations, about 120 of them, who had seized the opportunity to move in.3 There was also the Théâtre de Monsieur (the Comte de Provence), which had recently been installed in the Salle des Machines; still more people slept in the actors’ dressing rooms there. All of these human barnacles now had to be summarily ejected.
So ramshackle were the arrangements, so great the lack of preparation, that the Dauphin was obliged to spend the night in a room barricaded with furniture because the doors did not shut, with his faithful Governess the Marquise de Tourzel sitting on his bed, sleepless with anxiety. It was understandable that the little boy should wake up the next morning and ask in dismay: “Is today going to be like yesterday?” Nevertheless when he told the Queen, “Everything is very ugly here, Maman,” she replied firmly: “My son, Louis XIV lodged here comfortably enough; we must not be more particular than him.”4
At least the Queen herself was able to occupy the ground-floor apartments of the south wing, which had been recently decorated by the Comtesse de La Marck, a seventy-year-old member of the Noailles family, for her own use. However, the King, at the insistence of the Queen, had to buy out the Comtesse’s furnishings of marbles, boiseries and mirrors at an estimated cost of 117,000 livres.5 The royal children slept on the first floor, above the Queen. The King had three rooms on the ground floor, a cabinet for study on the mezzanine and his bedchamber on the first floor. (Once again the Queen thought it right that she, as the target of popular wrath—something amply confirmed by the shouts and insults throughout their journey—should not put the King in danger by her presence.) Madame Elisabeth was also on the ground floor, which she found so repugnant when the market-women pressed their faces to her windows that she asked to be rehoused in the Pavillon de Flore. Mesdames Tantes occupied the so-called Pavillon de Marsan, named for Louis XVI’s Governess. The Comte and Comtesse de Provence went to their own handsome palace of the Luxembourg.
Saint-Priest and Fersen greeted the King and Queen on their arrival from the Hôtel de Ville. The latter had travelled as part of the cortège in one of the King’s carriages and as he told his father: “I was a witness to everything.” Although Saint-Priest subsequently expressed himself shocked at Fersen’s presence, it merely underlined the fact that Fersen was one of the surviving members of the Queen’s Private Society, even if his precise status might defy definition. Fersen now sold the house and horses that he had acquired in Versailles and took up residence in Paris. Here he would soon be able to visit “Elle”—the Queen—while at the same time acting as the unofficial observer for the King of Sweden, Gustav being increasingly worried about the effects of French revolutionary violence on the rest of Europe. Other supporters of the Queen also rushed to greet her, including the Princesse de Lamballe, who had been absent for some time due to ill health. Madame Campan was also summoned; she found her mistress very flushed, although still exercising her charm and kindness towards those around her, winning them over by personal contact in a way that would have been incomprehensible to the mob at Versailles.6
“Kings who become prisoners are not far from death,” murmured Marie Antoinette to Madame Campan. But were they prisoners? It remained an interesting and for the time being unresolved question, since the events of recent days meant that no one in the royal family was going to test the limits of their freedom. The Queen poured out her thoughts on her future to Mercy; her emphasis was on the waiting game she now needed to play. She might personally need time to recover from the tragic deaths of her guards, but she also realized that the people needed time to rid themselves of their “horrible mistrust.” The only method of getting the royal family out of its present situation was “patience, time and inspiring [in the French] a great confidence.”7
With this in mind, the Queen would make a memorable comment to one deputation from the Commune of Paris on the subject of the events of 6 October: “I’ve seen everything, known everything and forgotten everything.” To Mercy in private her tune was very different. She worried about the effects of the recent risings in Alsace; if something went wrong there, the people would be persuaded it was the fault of “the Germans” and that would rebound on her. With this in mind, she intended to lead a secluded life and play no part in public appointments.8
There was more to the Queen’s fears than identification with “the Germans.” For the first time she was appreciating that the actions of those in the royal family who had emigrated would inevitably be attributed to her, the Austrian woman, however much she disagreed with them, however much they acted against her own husband’s interests. “Prudence, patience are my lot,” the Queen repeated in conclusion. “Above all, courage. And I can tell you that I need much more of it to support the everyday afflictions than the dangers of the night of the fifth of October.” It remained to be seen whether prudence and patience, let alone courage, would be enough to deal with the double challenge of royalty confined at home and royalties rampant abroad.
Once the desolation of the arrival was over—we must try to forget how we got here, Marie Antoinette told Mercy, in a show of oblivion belied by her memories—life at the Tuileries approached a kind of weird normality. Besides the royal apartments, there were several antechambers and more formal rooms including a salon, and a billiard room in the Galerie de Diane. A large convoy of vehicles brought furniture from Versailles. The Queen had her favourite mechanical dressing-table imported. Further furniture was commissioned from Riesener and others to brighten up those rooms that the Dauphin found so ugly. Léonard arrived and paid his visits, becoming ever more of a confidant. Mademoiselle Rose Bertin continued to be in attendance, although the Queen’s bills were down by a third from the peak in 1788 and her accounts showed more evidence of alterations and adaptation of existing garments.9
On 8 October, when the psychological wounds of what had happened were still raw, there was a traditional diplomatic reception at the Tuileries of the sort that some diplomats had actually expected at Versailles on the day of the ignominious royal departure. Lord Robert Fitzgerald, the English Minister, deputy to the Ambassador, commented on the extreme melancholy of the occasion; how the Queen looked very pale, and her eyes were full of tears. Nevertheless the reception took place. As time passed, the Princesse de Lamballe even attempted to give some soirées in her apartments, one of her duties as Superintendent of the Household. Marie Antoinette attended for a while until, according to Madame Campan, the sight of an English lord playing with a ring that contained a lock of the regicide Cromwell’s hair upset her.10 Ladies present sported more royalist tokens—white ribbons and white lilies at the breast—although in the streets they put up with the tricolour to avoid embarrassment.
The Comte and Comtesse de Provence continued to arrive from the Luxembourg for the family supper that they had been enjoying together for so many years. In the circumstances the cheerful company of the Comtesse, reading characters from faces in a way that made Pauline de Tourzel giggle, was most welcome, even if the girl felt stupid on being subjected to Provence’s carefully polished discourses. As for Madame Elisabeth, she might have said goodbye to Montreuil but she was nevertheless able to have her own milk and cream sent in from her country estate, and to receive happy news of the pregnancies of both her maidservants and of her cows.11
The financial allowance given by the National Assembly to the King for his living expenses—25 million livres—was not ungenerous and there were still the revenues of his estates. The National Guards who attended the King were not monsters but sensible and well-educated members of the bourgeoisie, under the immediate command of a member of the Noailles family. Presentations were still made, and in a gesture of accommodation to the new order Mayor Bailly was granted the Rights of Entry. Public dinners were still given twice weekly; the King had his lever and his coucher. Routine bulletins about the King’s health continued to be given as though no serious threat to that health had ever existed.
There were still over 150 people attached to the court and nearly 700 people at the Tuileries altogether, without counting troops. Even the Duc d’Orléans, making an appearance in a somewhat shamefaced manner, was there, for he was, after all, the first Prince of the Blood. Marie Antoinette, despite her hardening conviction of his implication in her ordeal, had learnt diplomacy since the distant days when she would not speak to the Comtesse Du Barry. Calmly, the Queen addressed a few words to her “cousin.” Orléans then departed for the more salubrious atmosphere of the English court, although even here Queen Charlotte was careful to note in her diary that he was received “not in a public capacity.”12
Marie Antoinette’s own domestic life was singularly unchanged. The royal family continued to go to Mass in public as they had done at Versailles. She worked at her tapestry with her ladies, as she had always liked to do, including large-scale projects for covering furniture. She played billiards with the King, who delighted in teaching “our dear Pauline” the game.*75 Above all, the Queen spent time with her children who were, as she told Princesse Louise, growing up: “They are always with me and give me my sole happiness.”14 Madame Royale now had all her lessons in her mother’s presence, Marie Antoinette being at last able to play that assiduous maternal role that she had originally planned for herself.
As for the Dauphin, he made everyone happy with his innocent gaiety. He was able to profit from the gardens of the Tuileries, for that fresh air and exercise which the Queen had told the Marquise de Tourzel were essential to his health; there (in sharp contrast to his mother) he was generally admired by doting spectators. Many people, whatever their political views, found it possible to see in the lively, handsome little boy a more agreeable symbol of the future of France than that represented by his corpulent, graceless father or his malevolent Austrian mother. Playing in the palace gardens, he became one of the sights of Paris, on one occasion presenting flowers to a large body of visiting Bretons until they ran out and then tearing lilac leaves in two to complete the process. Soon, with the resilience of youth, the Dauphin had quite forgotten his original disgust with the Tuileries. When asked whether he preferred Versailles or Paris, Louis Charles replied: “Paris, because I see so much more of Papa and Maman.”15 It was true.
Perhaps it was the balm of her children’s constant presence that caused the Queen’s health—long a cause for concern—to improve once she was settled in the Tuileries. Although her confidential communications to Count Mercy referred without cease to her “agitation,” the fact was that, according to Madame Campan, her frequent “hysterical disorders” vanished. Or perhaps it was simply, in Madame Campan’s words, that “all the faculties of her soul were called forth to support her physical strength.”16 In other words, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Teresa, knew how to put on a good show.
Marie Antoinette—for all the abuse heaped upon her, the people who deliberately splashed her with their carriages when she was out walking, the others who talked loudly and insultingly about her a short, safe distance away—was still expected to exercise that traditional benevolence that was an integral part of the duties of the Queen of France. Demands were quickly made that she should fund the many poor women encumbered with debt who had pawned their vital goods. The King merely authorised the redemption of pledges for goods worth one louis or less, but still the principle of the Queen’s innate compassion was maintained. In early January 1790 she presided over a committee meeting of a charité maternelle in aid of poverty-stricken mothers, at which a report was submitted to about forty women present. Marie Antoinette impressed the rich ladies in attendance by inviting everyone to sit in her presence. When she was asked to state her preferences, since funds did not permit helping more than two mothers at a time, she tactfully announced that she had consulted the National Assembly on the subject. Miraculously their two candidates were also her own. The Queen then gave a further financial gift, which in the words of one of those present, Madame Necker, would enable them to help further unfortunates in “the asylum of misery.”17
In February various visits were paid to a foundling hospital. The Queen showed the Dauphin, shortly to have his fifth birthday on 27 March 1790, a baby recently discovered on the steps of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, the parish church of the Tuileries, and gave him a little lecture: “Don’t forget what you have seen and let your protection extend one day to these unfortunate children.” Easter Week saw the royal family, accompanied by La Fayette, paying a visit to the working-class Faubourg Saint-Antoine where most of the trouble in July had started. There were demonstrations of joy, according to the Journal de Paris, and acclamations when alms were presented. Mayor Bailly remarked to the Queen that Her Majesty could see for herself “the joy of these good people.” The Marquis de Bombelles (who was not present) heard that Marie Antoinette replied: “Yes, the people are good when their masters visit them, but they are savage when they visit their masters.” At which the Mayor blushed. Whether the Queen gave such a pointed answer or not—it has an apocryphal ring at a time when Marie Antoinette was bending every effort to show “patience, prudence”—she certainly impressed a member of the National Guard on the same date. Standing very close to her, he admired the display of composure and even enjoyment that she put on at the public dinner.18
The next day, Maundy Thursday, both King and Queen washed the feet of the poor in an ancient ceremony to commemorate Easter Week. Another member of the National Guard, who watched, was impressed by the efficiency of the ritual: twelve poor people, dressed in new clothes at the expense of the King, sat on a bench, their right foot bare and resting on the edge of basin of hot water. The King “washed” the foot by flinging water over it from a little scoop in his hand. Next the Queen took a napkin from the stack on the silver platter held out to her and passed it over the newly pristine foot before moving on to the next foot—and the next napkin. Alms were then presented as the beneficiaries hastily resumed their right shoes and helped themselves to provisions set out in wooden boxes.19
Only the First Communion of Marie Thérèse, planned for 8 April at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, showed signs that the old routines were in some way diminished. The King did not attend, although the Queen did so, incognito. It was traditional for a Daughter of France to receive a handsome set of diamonds from the monarch on such a sanctified occasion but Louis XVI judged that such a present would be intolerably extravagant in view of the general financial need. He told Marie Thérèse that she was too sensible to worry about such artificial pleasure, and would undoubtedly prefer to go without her jewels rather than that the public should go without bread. In a tender blessing, as his daughter knelt before him, the King told Madame Royale that her destiny remained unknown, whether she would stay in France or live in another kingdom . . . And he prayed openly for the necessary grace to satisfy those other “children” of his, the subjects over whom God had given him dominion.20
On 12 May the Mayor of Paris presented the King with a commemorative gold medal with the inscription, “Henceforth I shall make this my official residence.” Bailly in his speech said that those words were engraved in the hearts of all citizens. The Queen and the Dauphin received similar medals, in silver and bronze. Marie Antoinette was assured by Bailly that the people wanted her to be always at the side of the King, while the Dauphin (“Monseigneur”) was to be instructed by the Queen’s example as well as the King’s.21 It was all very flowery. Ten days later the King and Queen walked on foot, as was customary, in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, which marked the feast of Corpus Christi, and proceeded to Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. The National Assembly, invited to participate, did so happily, with its president walking on the right of the King.
This seemingly unchanged royal round masked the fact that vast political changes were not only taking place but were being accepted by the King. Catherine the Great, in a letter handwritten from despotic Russia and which Marie Antoinette showed to Madame Campan, advocated showing magnificent indifference to recent events: “Kings ought to go their own way without worrying about the cries of the people, as the moon goes on its course without being stopped by the cries of dogs.” This was not an option available to the King of France as a new Constitution was slowly—very slowly—hammered out by the National Assembly. There was a growing and deleterious gap, from the point of view of the King, between the apparent executive and the actual legislative arm of the government, since the National Assembly decreed that the King’s ministers could not be chosen from among its deputies. Political compromise seemed of the essence to preserve the King’s remaining authority. On 4 February, on the advice of Necker, the King went so far as to describe himself as “at the head of the Revolution” in a speech to the Assembly, having spent a rather pleasanter portion of the day stag-hunting.22 This placatory scene infuriated royalists abroad, who from exile found it easy to denounce the diminution of the King’s power.
Louis XVI’s perceived weakness also had its critics within the bosom of his Parisian family. Madame Elisabeth, for so long the devoted pious gentle sister, was developing into a figure of proud conservatism, under the remote control of her brother Artois. She interpreted the events at Versailles from a paternalistic angle as being examples of the people’s dreadful ingratitude, adding, “If I were the King, I’d do something about making them regret it.” Revealingly, she told a correspondent that the memories of that night—an outrage of the divinely prescribed order—had almost turned her against praying. By May 1790, Madame Elisabeth admitted to Artois, in sentiments that divided her sharply from the brother and sister-in-law with whom she resided, that she regarded civil war as “necessary” with bloodletting being somehow therapeutic.23
Like Louis XVI and unlike Elisabeth, Marie Antoinette believed in compromise. On 4 February 1790, when the King spoke to the National Assembly, she received some deputies on the terrace of the Tuileries where she was playing with Louis Charles. She made a gracious speech beginning, “Messieurs . . . behold my son,” and was told by one deputy to watch over “this precious kid.” The Queen had, in fact, had a speech prepared for her by the Keeper of the Seals, but in the event she spoke without a text. Her words summed up her public philosophy. In referring to France as “the nation I had the glory to adopt when I united myself with the King,” she went on to say that “my title of mother assures my links [with it] for ever.”24
Yet even as these aspirations were entertained towards a state where the King still had some limited powers—a kind of constitutional monarchy, a parallel world was being developed. In this world the notion of escape was ever present. Immediately after the events of 6 October 1789, Marie Antoinette summoned the Secretary of the Queen’s Commandment, Augeard, to the Tuileries and gave him one of the little keys that enabled her confidential servants to slip in and out without observation. Augeard suggested that a loyal person should proceed to Vienna and ask for help. When the Queen asked him, “And who should that be?” the Secretary replied, “Your Majesty.” “What!” exclaimed the Queen. “I would leave the King alone.” But Augeard was full of practical plans: the Dauphin could be dressed as a girl, in clothes matching those of Madame Royale, while the Queen herself would be totally unadorned. And she would leave a letter for her husband (which could be made public) along these lines: “It is impossible for me to disguise the fact that I have had the terrible misfortune to displease your subjects.” She would rather condemn herself to “a secluded retreat outside your dominions” than be seen to interfere with the making of the new Constitution.25
According to Augeard, the Queen listened to him seriously before rejecting the plan. On 19 October 1789, she told him: “All reflection is over; I shall not depart; my duty is to die at the feet of the King.” Nevertheless it is evident that not only Marie Antoinette but well-wishers around her were looking anew at her situation. On 12 November, for example, Mercy inspected the marriage contract hammered out nearly twenty years earlier. He noted that in the case of her widowhood, the Queen was free to stay in France or go to Austria.26 In late 1789, it is clear that her freedom of action rather than her widowhood was the issue.
What is also clear is that one element already present in discussions of escape at Versailles on 15 July 1789—the reluctance of the Queen to leave the King’s side—remained firmly in place. As plans to legalize divorce in France were debated in 1790, being finally enacted in November, this reluctance gained rather than lost its strength, as Augeard would testify to Marie Antoinette’s sister Maria Carolina. Another element present from the beginning was the pathological indecision of the King.27 This, however sympathetic in a good man who feared to make things worse for his subjects, yet could not see how to make them better, combined fatally with the ultimate respect for his royal authority of those around him. At this stage Marie Antoinette hesitated to make up the King’s mind for him as she had once tried to do, so conscious was she of herself as a liability to the monarchy.
All of this was seen to disastrous effect in various abortive schemes during the spring of 1790. The details of the Favras Affair, including the participation of the Comte de Provence, remain mysterious since the conspiracy never came to fruition. The Marquis de Favras, accused of a plot to kidnap the King and take him to Péronne, was tried and executed on 19 February 1790, leaving Louis XVI and Provence to grant his widow a pension. The Queen, who wanted to comfort the widow and her child but did not dare do so publicly, also sent fifty louis. When a similar scheme was mooted by the Comte d’Inisdal, it was resolved to seek the King’s agreement. The King first of all took refuge in silence, and then when his wife insisted that he must say something, muttered: “Tell the Comte d’Inisdal that I cannot consent to being abducted.” Was that tacit approval—so long as Louis himself could not be blamed? If not, what was it? The fact was that the attitude of the King was crucial and he was, as he had always been, “irresolute.”28
It would not have been at all difficult to “rescue” Louis XVI in the early summer of 1790 or, indeed, for the King himself to take flight. His Journal shows that in May he was riding out almost every other day to Bellevue and other places in order to keep up the frantic exercise that he found so necessary to his health, and there were no objections. The uniting of the Queen and the children with the head of the family later might have caused more problems, if not at this stage insuperable ones. However, in June the entire royal family was permitted to go to Saint Cloud as they would normally have done at this season to avoid the summer heat. Not only, as the Queen observed, did they all need fresh air desperately but they could also be more isolated from the menacing atmosphere of Paris where insults were hurled at her person daily. At Saint Cloud the King, riding by permission without guards for as much as five hours daily, was in an even stronger position to take evasive action. According to Madame Campan, the Queen had a plan to meet the King with the children in a wood a short distance from Saint Cloud . . . Her plan foundered because it would have meant abandoning the elderly royal aunts.29
At this point the destination of the royal family in any proposed secret flight—or dignified departure—became an issue. Were they actually to cross the borders of France? Going abroad, to become the visible puppet of the émigrés led by Artois and the Princes de Condé and Conti, would be a perilous move for the King in terms of propaganda. As for the situation in Austria, the death of the Emperor Joseph II on 20 February 1790—he had been worn out by hard work and ravaged by tuberculosis—caused Marie Antoinette great grief. It also complicated her relationship with her homeland. In Joseph she mourned the loss of a “friend and brother” and she might have added a “quasi-father” too. But she had had in effect no real contact with his successor, Leopold, Duke of Tuscany, he of the prolific family, for twenty-five years.
Of course, the new Emperor hastened to assure his sister that he would be giving her his full support, asking in return for the same friendship and confidence she had given Joseph. Marie Antoinette for her part told Leopold touchingly, if rather optimistically, that he could count on “a good ally” in Louis XVI. More candidly, Count Mercy admitted that Marie Antoinette and Leopold had never really got on. Yet this was the powerful brother on whom Marie Antoinette now depended to control the émigrés on the one hand and to prop up their own position—possibly with money—on the other. As the Bourbons abroad revealed their selfishness, Artois with his father-in-law the King of Sardinia in Turin, the lesser Princes in Coblenz, Marie Antoinette began to think wistfully of her original family. The thought of the marriage festivities of Leopold’s heir Francis to his first cousin, Maria Carolina’s daughter, who was said to resemble Marie Antoinette herself, made her misty-eyed. “You are in the middle of wedding feasts: I wish all the happiness possible to your children.”30
Even the Archduchess Marie Christine, who had had her own troubles, was the subject of a new benevolence. Ejected with the Archduke Albert from Belgium by rebels known as the Patriots, Marie Christine had taken refuge at Bonn. Here the youngest Habsburg, Max, now Elector of Cologne, had given them a castle. Marie Antoinette was becoming increasingly wary of her correspondence falling into the wrong hands—people could so easily take the opportunity to forge her handwriting, with damaging interpolations—so that to Marie Christine she emphasized that their letters were simply “two sisters giving proof of friendship” and who could object to that? Her tone in May was infinitely sad. All the Queen wanted was for order and calm to return to “this unhappy country” and—a key phrase—to “prepare for my poor child [the Dauphin] to have a happier future than our own”; for they had seen “too many horrors and too much blood ever really to be happy again.” “When you are all three together,” Marie Antoinette concluded, referring to Marie Christine, Albert and Max, “think of me sometimes.”31
In view of “the extravagance of Turin,” as Marie Antoinette described Artois’ increasingly martial behaviour, it made sense for the King and his own family to remain within the boundaries of France. The taint that an invasion, theoretically intended to help them, would bring to their cause had to be avoided. In July 1790, probably at the insistence of Count Mercy, Marie Antoinette returned to the political role that she had eschewed in the aftershock of 6 October 1789. But it was to be a strictly behind-the-scenes affair; she did not, for example, attend committees as she had done during the brief period of her real political influence. She did, however, allow herself to be drawn into delicate secret negotiations with the radical aristocrat, the Comte de Mirabeau, in the relative privacy of Saint Cloud. Mirabeau, whose dissolute lifestyle had left him with a mountain of debts, needed money; the King needed an ally who still believed that there was a place for the monarchy in the new Constitution.
The Queen had feelings of revulsion for Mirabeau, referring to “the horror that his immorality inspires in me.” But she agreed to suppress these feelings in the interest of making Mirabeau’s constitutional plans work. (He on the contrary admired her “manly” strength of purpose.) The person she referred to as “M” was to be paid 5000 livres a month, all in the strictest secrecy. It was part of Mirabeau’s strategy that the King should leave Paris, and quite openly as well. Aiming at some system by which ministers were responsible to the National Assembly, he needed the King to be free to operate, without apparently being under duress. Mirabeau suggested that Louis XVI should adjourn either to Rouen, which lay in a loyalist area of the country, or to the château of Compiègne.32
Another strong advocate of flight from an early stage was Count Fersen, now the Queen’s closest confidant. Whether or not an active sexual relationship still flourished, on which some doubt has already been cast, he continued to be Marie Antoinette’s passionate admirer, as he repeatedly confided to his sister Sophie Piper. To Fersen she was a heroine, misused, misjudged, sensitive and suffering—above all, so full of goodness, at a time when this kind of opinion of Marie Antoinette was rare enough. Although it was incidentally a loyalty shared by his mistress, Eléanore Sullivan, who with her official protector Quentin Craufurd, “ce bon Craufurd” as Marie Antoinette called him, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Queen. As early as January 1790, Fersen wrote that only a war—be it “exterior” or “interior”—could re-establish the royal authority in France; but how could that be achieved “when the King is a prisoner in Paris?”33 Fersen borrowed a house at Auteuil from the Queen’s friend and a member of her Private Society, Count Esterhazy. He was thus able to take full advantage of the presence of the royal family at Saint Cloud, which continued, with certain intermissions, until the end of October.
Fersen’s influence as an active and practical promoter of an escape plan was further increased with the departure of Count Mercy, at the request of the Emperor Leopold. Marie Antoinette described herself as being “in despair” at this development and it is easy to see why. Although she staunchly tried to see that it was better for him personally to depart, Marie Antoinette had, after all, depended on Mercy’s advice, for better or for worse, for twenty years. Now he was leaving her at the most critical moment in her fortunes and she was terrified of “being mistaken in the course I must take.”34
The Queen told the Emperor that Mercy had for her “the feelings of a father for a child,” but the reverse was actually the truth; it was Marie Antoinette who nourished childish sentiments of respect for and dependency on the ambassador, which were not necessarily reciprocated.35 Unlike Marie Antoinette, Mercy was not sentimental. The fact that he had known the Queen since she was a nervous fourteen-year-old fiancée weighed less with him than the duties imposed by his career, as he saw them. How could the emotional Marie Antoinette foresee that these duties would divide them, once the former ambassador to France became Minister in Brussels? His new task would be the pacification of Belgium following the Patriots’ revolt, which was brought to an end by Austrian troops in December 1790. The “Austrian woman” was left with only Counsellor Blumendorf and a skeleton staff representing her homeland in Paris.
One of the forays made by the royal family from Saint Cloud to the Tuileries concerned the official celebration of the anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille. Marie Antoinette dreaded the occasion in advance, saying that she could not think back to that terrible time without trembling: “It brings together for us everything that is most cruel and sorrowful.” Nevertheless all the royals were dutifully present. In fact the Fête de la Fédération, as it was described in honour of patriotic “federal” movements nation-wide, had none of the violence associated with the previous years; it simply illustrated the bizarre contradictions as yet unresolved in the future of the government of France. There was, for example, the position of the Church. Two days earlier a Civil Constitution of the Clergy had been proposed, involving the popular elections of bishops and clergy; the pious King sanctioned it, with a heavy heart, perhaps, but he sanctioned it. On 14 July 1790 a commemorative Mass was said at the Champ-de-Mars by the Abbé Talleyrand, once assistant to Calonne in his financial reforms, then a deputy of the First Estate, now allied to Mirabeau. The Duc d’Orléans, returned from England, was present, as was the Duc de Chartres. Nearly seventeen and sharing his father’s political tendencies, Louis Philippe had taken to attending the Jacobin Club*76—one of the many lively debating clubs or “pressure groups” springing up in Paris. The young radical was recognized and carried shoulder high by the crowd.36
Yet there was comfort to be derived from the event for a sovereign who still could not make up his mind to be “a fugitive King.” The event was immensely popular, with advertisements carried in the newspapers for houses to rent with a good view. Even the appallingly wet weather, which effectively doused the Queen’s tactful red, white and blue plumes and extinguished the illuminations, did not put the crowd off. Three hundred thousand people watched, some of them wearing the bonnet rouge, based on the red Roman cap that slaves sported when they gained their liberty. Eighteen thousand National Guards took part. When royal umbrellas were raised, the crowd shouted “Down with them!” and “No umbrellas!”; they wanted to see their King. The oath that La Fayette proposed from the altar included the royal name; La Fayette suggested it should be “to the Nation, the Law and the King.” That night at the public dinner following the fête, there were cries of “Long live the King!” outside the windows of the Tuileries.37
Even the Queen was momentarily entitled to believe that she had her uses. On the eve of the ceremony, delegates from the various provinces were received. Those from Maine congratulated Marie Antoinette on her courage on 6 October, although she turned the compliment aside in favour of a reference to the superior bravery of her loyal bodyguards. Watching the troops file past the King, the Queen’s attention was caught by a particular uniform. She asked its wearer, “Monsieur, from what province do you come?” The answer was: “The province over which your ancestors reigned,” and the Queen, happily, was able to point out to her husband: “These are your faithful Lorrainers.” For these delegates “the presence of the august daughter of Francis I, the last Duke of Lorraine” made an impression that was “visible on their countenances.”38
The fact was, however, that the situation of the royal family was as unresolved as ever. In August the Marquis de Bouillé, at the head of the Royal German Regiment, succeeded in putting down a mutiny at Nancy in the north-west of France. This news had the effect of encouraging the royal couple to see in the politically constitutionalist Bouillé a loyal and efficient soldier; it was a view that was to have some bearing on their future in the year ahead. Yet when the news reached Paris, there were demonstrations at the Tuileries against the King’s ministers and fears that there might be another violent march, this time to Saint Cloud. Unable to control its course, Necker vanished for the third time from the government, this time unmourned. Mirabeau, for his part, wrote a memorandum that horrified the Queen, since he advocated civil war as the way of introducing order, and the kind of constitutional rule he wanted, into France. “He must be mad to think that we would provoke civil war!” cried the desperate Queen.39
The royal family returned from Saint Cloud on 30 October 1790. The Dauphin was no longer able to enjoy that freedom which had benefited him so much, and all of them were more constrained in the goldfish-bowl that the Tuileries had become. The next day saw the publication (in England) of Edmund Burke’s famous tract, Reflections on the Revolution in France. He turned his previous Whig pro-American convictions on their head, urging the King to resist all further negotiations. It was, said George III approvingly, “a book every gentleman should read.” In France alone it sold 16,000 copies in three months. In due course, Marie Antoinette may well have read Reflections, the book that made her a legendary heroine in her own lifetime. Burke certainly handed the Duke of Dorset one copy, which he hoped would be passed on, and another copy, in a translation by the cosmopolitan Louis Dutens, was presented to the Queen by the Duchesse de St. James. Madame Elisabeth also read it, in French, unlike one of her ladies, Bombelles’ wife Angélique, who was clever enough to read it in English.40
In a famous passage, Burke recalled his sight of Marie Antoinette, then Dauphine, at Versailles: “And surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart I must have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! . . . Little did I dream that I should have lived to see disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone . . .”41
For the Queen, no longer glittering like the morning star, the question of the swords leaping from their scabbards to avenge her was urgently in need of solving. What swords from which scabbards? And given that the age of chivalry was undoubtedly gone (with the exception perhaps of Count Fersen), what were the terms that these modern chevaliers would demand in return for rescuing the royal family?