CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE TOWER
“You will see that they will put us into the Tower. They will make that a real prison for us.”
MARIE ANTOINETTE TO THE MARQUISE DE TOURZEL, 13 AUGUST 1792
Lanterns illuminated the walls of the Temple when the royal party arrived, as though for a public festival, and a great crowd of people chanted “Long live the nation!” That cry at least was a familiar one. More sinister was the gleeful Marseillais chant of the guards:
Madame goes up into her Tower
When will she come down again?
It referred to the fact that the Temple was in fact two separate structures. There was the gracious seventeenth-century palace where the young Mozart had once played at the invitation of the Prince de Conti, its governor; more recently it had belonged to the Comte d’Artois. Then there was the Tower, sixty feet high, a frowning mediaeval edifice that had once been part of the old monastery of the Templar Order; this was divided into a Great Tower and a Small Tower, with various turrets attached. It lay in an ancient district not far from the Bastille and was not much known to Parisians from other districts; some of those who accompanied the royal family had never been there.
Marie Antoinette had always had a horror of the Tower. Visiting her brother-in-law’s palace, she had tried to persuade him to have its grim adjunct knocked down.*97 One suspects that this was due more to dislike of a building so far from the pastoral spirit of the Petit Trianon than to some presentiment. Once at the Convent of the Feuillants, however, she had expressed genuine apprehension, exclaiming to the Marquise de Tourzel: “You will see that they will put us into the Tower. They will make that a real prison for us.” Yet the public dinner served to the royal family on their arrival, together with the commissioners of the Commune who had accompanied them, did take place in the palace. They were all exhausted and Louis Charles fell asleep. There was a move to take the King alone to the Great Tower and leave the rest of them in the palace. In the end, however, orders came that the whole family was to be moved, for the time being, to the Small Tower while work was done to render the Great Tower both habitable and secure.1
The Small Tower itself, that evening, could scarcely be described as comfortable for the royal party. The eyes of the two valets, Chamilly and Hüe, met in silence over the uncurtained and verminous bedstead destined for Louis XVI.2 (In spite of this, their master, characteristically, had a good night’s sleep.) Indecent engravings in the room for Marie Thérèse were removed on her father’s orders. Madame Elisabeth, Pauline de Tourzel and the waiting-woman Madame Navarre all had to sleep together in the kitchen. So they began the process of adaptation to their new home—or prison, the “real prison” of Marie Antoinette’s fears.
Security was, of course, immense. Four commissioners were in attendance at any one time, casting lots for the two who spent the night in the Tower. Twenty guards manned the gate. There were also elaborate precautions over the delivery of items such as books, linen and clothes. The lack of respect to the King—the suspended King—grieved Marie Thérèse. Instead of “Sire” or “Majesté,” he was now “Monsieur” or even “Louis,” this man whose own wife did not address him in public as “Louis.” One particular jailer, Rocher, was found particularly detestable by the girl since he specialized in petty humiliations such as taking to his bed early, thus obliging the royal family to file past him. He loved the fact that the wicket gate was so low that the Queen herself had to bow her head before him to enter it, and then there was his deliberate manipulation of his pipe. Madame Elisabeth even asked one of the commissioners why Rocher smoked so persistently in their faces. “No doubt because he likes it,” was the curt reply. Some of the commissioners also took pleasure in sitting down in the presence of the royal ladies and, as the weather grew colder, putting their feet on the firedogs to block the warmth.3
In spite of all this, the royal family was able to develop its own way of life, as prisoners do.4 In luxury it was certainly a precipitate descent from the comparative ease of the Tuileries where they had spent the last two and three-quarter years. But as a regime it was not atrociously severe. The accommodation of the Small Tower was arranged to give the King a bedroom on the third floor and a little study in the turret. The Queen and others slept on the floor below him. On the first floor was an antechamber, a dining room and the unexpected asset of a book-lined turret. The King revelled in this library—1500 books that had been the archive of the Knights of Malta. He read something like one book a day, frowning over Voltaire and Rousseau who, he said, had been “the ruin of France.” The Queen had her beloved tapestry and at one point was able to send for her knitting needles from the Tuileries. The little dog Mignon was also brought in, since there were gardens for exercise.
Nobody had any kind of wardrobe—the Queen seems to have arrived with two dresses, one blue, one dark pink—but orders for lingerie were allowed to be given to the celebrated Madame Éloffe on arrival, and again on 15 and 18 August. In the next two months 25,000 livres would be spent on assorted items such as sheets, stockings, laundry and hats (black beaver tricornes for the Queen and Madame Elisabeth). Sailor suits were ordered for Louis Charles, and the King could still get his shoes from his usual cobbler, Giot, in the rue du Bac. Louis generally wore one of his two coats of plain chestnut brown, with metal filigree buttons, and a white piqué waistcoat. Marie Antoinette’s outfits were similarly modest—loose pierrots of toile de Jouy, dresses of brown and white sprigged cotton and plain white dimity, worn with lace caps. She also practised the economy of making little changes to her costume with the aid of fichus and shawls. There was a payment of 600 livres to Rose Bertin for August and September; her business still flourished although the couturier herself had left the country in 1791. Much of this sum went on accessories and alterations.5
Food was still served liberally. The royal servants, knowing no other way of attending to their master, continued to produce the soups, entrées, roasts, fowls and desserts with which he was familiar. Louis XVI continued to drink—bordeaux, champagne and, what was considered abstemious, a single liqueur in the evening. In fact, the provision of food quickly assumed an additional importance because its acquisition necessitated trips into the outside world. There were three men in the kitchen, Turgy, Chrétien and Marchand, who had managed to infiltrate the Tower by pretending that they came on the orders of the Commune. The sympathetic Turgy used his thrice-weekly expeditions outside to acquire news and to pass on messages. There was certainly news to impart. The Prussian armies under the Duke of Brunswick crossed the French frontier on 19 August; Longwy fell four days later.
To Hüe, Marie Antoinette emphasized as before that “not one French fortress” must be given up to secure their liberty. If the royal family was freed, she said, they intended to go to Strasbourg in order to stop “this important city,” which “must be preserved for France,” becoming German once more. Hüe was happily convinced that the daughter of Maria Teresa, the sister of Joseph II and Leopold II, the aunt of Francis II, had given way to “the consort of the King of France and the mother of the heir to the throne.”6 The fact was that for all her nationalistic words, the hopes of Marie Antoinette could hardly fail to rise as news of allied military successes percolated through to the prisoners.
On 19 August, however, the day that these armies crossed the frontier, the little household in the Tower received a further devastating blow. The commissioners of the Commune announced that the surviving attendants, including the Princesse de Lamballe, the Marquise de Tourzel with Pauline, Chamilly, Hüe and the waiting-women, were to be removed for interrogation. This was in keeping with a new order, prompted by the Commune, which set up a special tribunal to try royalists for crimes allegedly committed during the overthrow of the monarchy. Marie Antoinette made desperate pleas to keep the Princesse de Lamballe beside her, on the grounds that she was a royal relative. She wished to protect the vulnerable friend whom she had introduced into this perilous situation, judging the Tower to be safer than an ordinary prison. When the Princesse was removed with the others, the Queen urged the Marquise de Tourzel in a low voice to look after her, and try to answer for her where possible.7 The Princesse and the Tourzels were now incarcerated in the La Force prison. Louis Charles, separated at last from his devoted Governess, shared the Queen’s room. It was Hüe who was, to the general pleasure and surprise, allowed to return after being interrogated about the flight to Varennes and (correctly) found to be innocent.
The three royal ladies were now without any female attendants. A couple called Tison with a daughter, another Pauline, were brought in to do the rough work of the establishment. No one liked the Tisons; the husband, in his late fifties, was gruff and unpleasant, the wife a hysteric more worried about her own comforts than those of the royal family she was supposed to serve. The next import permitted by the Commune was of a very different calibre. This was a valet named Hanet Cléry, who was intended to help Hüe in his work, but when the latter was finally removed for good in early September, he became the effective manager of the tiny household. Cléry had been in Louis Charles’s household since the boy’s birth; he had escaped from the Tuileries on 10 August by jumping out of a window. (Seeing that Cléry wore a plain coat and carried no sword, a helpful Marseillais had offered him one of his own, in case Cléry wanted to participate in the killing.) Not only loyal and part of the inner network of royal servants, Cléry was also intelligent and resourceful. “The faithful Cléry” would turn out to be an important witness to conditions in the Tower. Furthermore, additional joy, he had trained as a barber. Cléry could do the King’s hair in the morning, and he could also move on to perform the same functions for the ladies whose hair had not been properly dressed for eight days. Hairdressing as ever being central to court life, even in this, the most modest of versions, Cléry used his sessions with the comb to pass on information discreetly.8
From time to time harsh sounds did penetrate the Temple. There was the monotonous daily chanting of that song “Madame goes up into her Tower” by the guards. There were the insults shouted by the public—up to 400 of them—who had taken to behaving like tourists outside this new sight of Paris. “We will strangle the little cubs and the fat pig” was one cry, “Madame Veto shall dance from the lantern” another. On 25 August, the Feast of St. Louis, which had been so splendidly celebrated with multiple illuminations in days gone by, Marie Thérèse heard the dreaded sound of the “Ça ira” at seven o’clock in the morning. Later the royal family learnt from the Procurator Manuel, one of the commissioners, that La Fayette had fled France. Manuel also handed over a letter from Mesdames Tantes, leading their pious lives in Rome. This was the last letter that the family received officially from outside, according to Marie Thérèse. The family was, however, unaware that in the evening Durosoy, the publisher of the royalist Gazette de Paris, was executed by a newfangled instrument called the guillotine.*989
From the point of view of the inhabitants of the Tower, therefore, the day of 2 September began like any other. The King was actually with Commissioner Daujon, watching a house being demolished outside the walls of the Tower in the interests of greater security, when the noise of cannon was heard. The King’s great shout of laughter at the fall of a big stone was interrupted. According to Daujon he turned pale, began to tremble, and in his cowardice “forgot he was a man.” Marie Antoinette cried out: “Save my husband!” This was echoed by Madame Elisabeth with: “Have pity on my brother!”11 Even if Daujon’s charges were true, Louis XVI, who had been the subject of two apparently murderous assaults within the last six weeks, can hardly be blamed for his reaction. But indecisive and incapable of rising to an occasion as the King might be, he was not a coward as the events of 20 June had shown. It is far more likely that he feared for the safety of his family.
Marie Thérèse bore witness to their general bewilderment at this point: “We didn’t know what was happening.” Perhaps it was just as well. What was happening was a maniacal assault on the inhabitants of the Paris prisons, with some of the royal family’s most beloved attendants still incarcerated in the La Force. These included the Marquise de Tourzel and Pauline—and that hate figure featured so often in obscene popular publications, the lesbian paramour of the “Infamous Antoinette,” the Princesse de Lamballe.
It will never be known for sure how many prisoners died, and there were similar massacres at Versailles and Rheims. Recent estimates make the Paris figure about 1300, the rates of killing varying from prison to prison. Were these assassins all foreigners to the city imported specially for the task? “Greeks and Corsicans” with red caps and bare arms were mentioned, as well as southerners. Were they all drunk? Or was it, perhaps, the kind of wild blood-lust helped on by drink that can seize a whole mob, blotting out the sense of morality possessed by the individual? The ad hoc tribunals formed at the prisons certainly took pleasure in despatching most of those who were dragged before them to their deaths. The killings at the Bicêtre and the Salpêtrière prisons were especially frightful since these traditionally housed beggars and prostitutes, as well as boys and girls. Children as young as eight died, being found strangely hard to finish off: “At that age it is hard to let go of life.” These totally apolitical figures fell victim to murderers, most of whom were in a kind of bloodthirsty delirium throughout the whole horrible proceedings. John Moore wrote in his diary: “It is now past twelve at midnight and the bloody work goes on! Almighty God!”12
Yet the Paris theatres and restaurants did not close. A curious indifference to the whole matter gripped the city. A bourgeois family passing the prison of the Carmes, from which the most piteous cries were heard, was merely told by the father to quicken its steps. It was distressing, of course; nevertheless there were “implacable enemies” of the nation who were being eliminated, in order that their own lives might be more secure.13 This indifference found a parallel in the reaction of the political leaders. Robespierre took the convenient line that the will of the people was being expressed. Danton, if he did not inspire the killings, shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the fate of the prisoners with a coarse expletive. At the end of the day, the Girondins, who would have been in prison if Robespierre and Marat had had their way, were still safe, but the Jacobins were now in control.
At ten o’clock Commissioner Manuel told the royal family that the Princesse de Lamballe had survived. He was wrong. It was the Marquise de Tourzel who was miraculously acquitted in front of the tribunal of revolutionaries, while Pauline was spirited away to safety by a mysterious English Good Samaritan. A different destiny was reserved for the Princesse. Brought before the tribunal, she refused to denounce the King and Queen. The Princesse, who had once been too sensitive to bear the tribulations of ordinary life, found in herself the strength to answer with awesome composure: “I have nothing to reply, dying a little earlier or a little later is a matter of indifference to me. I am prepared to make the sacrifice of my life.” So she was directed to the exit for the Abbaye prison—actually a code for execution. Once outside, in the courtyard of La Force, according to the testimony of a Madame Bault who worked there, “several blows of a hammer on the head laid her low and then they fell on her.”14
Afterwards terrible stories were told of the fate of the Princesse de Lamballe; that she had been violated, alive or dead,*99 that her breasts and private parts had been hacked off or, in another variant of savagery, her heart had been cooked and eaten. These stories were heard by many people in Paris at the time, the frequent use of the words “fearful indignities . . . of a nature not to be related” and “private infamies” as well as “disembowelment” covering many possibilities.15
Unquestionably the Princesse’s head was cut off and mounted on a pike. Her naked body was also ripped right open and her innards taken out, to be mounted on another pike. The corpse and the two grisly trophies were then paraded through Paris. The young Comte de Beaujolais, son of the Duc d’Orléans, who was doing his lessons at the Palais-Royal, was horrified to see the head of “Tante” pass by, accompanied by her lacerated body. Along the way the head was thrust into the lap of the apprentice wax modeller Marie Grosholz. She was obliged to make a cast with “the savage murderers” standing over her although, having been art teacher to Madame Elisabeth, Marie had known the Princesse and her hands trembled almost too much for her to work.16
It was now the firm intention of the crowd, fired up with wine and more wine, to take the head of the Princesse de Lamballe to the Temple so that the “Infamous Antoinette” could bestow a last kiss on those sweet lips she had loved. This makes another story plausible: that a visit was paid to a barber along the way for the Princesse’s hair to be dressed. For the Princesse’s original coiffure could hardly have survived the assault of the hammers outside La Force, even if she had managed to preserve it during her fortnight inside. By the time the head on its pike appeared bobbing up and down outside the windows of the dining room of the Tower, the famous blonde curls were floating prettily as they had done in life, even if the face was waxen white. As a result the head was instantly recognizable.17
The King and Queen were upstairs, playing backgammon, when the head appeared outside the dining room, but Cléry saw it and so did Madame Tison who gave a loud cry; then they heard the frenzied laughter of “those savages” outside. Upstairs the municipal officers had had the decency to close the shutters and the commissioners kept them away from the windows. But it was one of these officers who told the King, when he asked what all the commotion was about: “If you must know, Monsieur, they are trying to show you the head of Madame de Lamballe.” Cléry too rushed in and confirmed what was happening.
Marie Antoinette, wrote her daughter, was “frozen with horror”; it was the only time Marie Thérèse ever saw her mother’s firmness abandon her.18 Mercifully, the Queen then fainted away. But the crisis was not yet over. The “savages,” by climbing up some of the rubble of the destroyed houses, managed to get their pikes and their burdens higher up. They were still determined to secure the kiss of Marie Antoinette on the Lamballe’s lips, or better still, her own head to join that of her favourite.
It was Commissioner Daujon who saved the day. His narrative confirms the fact that apart from the head, there was a huge blacksmith holding a pike with something—probably the heart—on it; another pike held a scrap of the dead woman’s chemise, stained with mud and blood.19 But Daujon would not permit the head to be brought inside. Instead the crowd was allowed to parade round the Tower with their pikes, and so the Queen never actually saw it, leaving the image, for better or for worse, to the eye of her appalled imagination. And Daujon prevented the entry into the Tower itself by the use of the tricolour ribbon on the door. “The head of Antoinette does not belong to you,” he said with an authority that might have a sinister impact for the future. The rioting went on until about five o’clock. Later Marie Thérèse listened to the noise of her mother’s weeping all through the night.
The head of the Princesse was subsequently rescued by a compassionate citizen, Jacques Pointel, who asked for it to be given burial in the cemetery for foundling children. But in the end the old Duc de Penthièvre managed to have body and head buried together in his family plot—where he expected to lie himself before long. It was Louis XVI who spoke the epitaph for the Princesse when he said that her conduct “in the course of our misfortunes”—and he might have added, “her own”—amply justified the Queen’s original choice of her as a friend.20
If the killings stopped, the chaos in Paris continued. During this period a band of enterprising professional robbers managed to lift a great many of the Crown Jewels from their storehouse, the Garde-Meuble in the Place Louis XV, because no one was guarding it. These jewels, said to be the finest royal collection in Europe, had been inventoried in June 1791 by the National Assembly at 23 million livres; the collection had been enhanced by the rich gifts of oriental sovereigns, especially Tippoo Sahib in the last years of the former regime. As Crown Jewels, they could not be disposed of by the King, unlike the gems conveyed abroad by Léonard on behalf of the Queen which, being “mounted in Germany at a much earlier date,” had been brought with her on her marriage and were thus her personal property. Over six nights, using a first-floor window, the thieves easily helped themselves to 7 million livres’ worth, much of which was never seen again, including the fabulous pearls of Anne of Austria, which she had bequeathed to the Queens of France.*10021
In the general disorder, everyone accused everyone else of the crime. The Girondins, for example, believed that Danton intended to use the proceeds to bribe the Duke of Brunswick to retreat. Of course Marie Antoinette was blamed. The execration in best-selling pamphlets and obscene engravings did not cease, many people expecting the Queen to take Jeanne de Lamotte Valois’s former place in the Bicêtre prison.22 Any evil, including a daring jewel robbery brilliantly organized from a closed prison, could be attributed to her.
A new pamphlet, Le Ménage royal en déroute, whose subtitle was “Open war between Louis XVI and his wife,” had the drunken King beating up his wife, that “sacrée” bitch. The truth of Temple life was very different. “The way our family passed their days,” as Marie Thérèse put it, had an odd Rousseau-esque quality, if one forgot the circumstances. It was Rousseau—once admired by the Queen, now blamed by the King for France’s ills—who pronounced that “the real nurse is the mother and the real teacher is the father.” These roles the royal couple now proceeded to fulfil in harmony. This was a very different kind of routine from that so cheerfully described by the young Dauphine Marie Antoinette in her letter home to her mother twenty-two years earlier: “I put on my rouge and wash my hands in front of the whole world.” The Queen did not open her door until Cléry arrived. By this time the valet had already woken the King, dressed his hair and readied him to pray and read until breakfast—all with the door open so that the municipal officers could check him. Cléry then helped with the toilette of the women, doing their hair and teaching Marie Thérèse how to do her own on the Queen’s instructions. A special sign was used when he had a bit of information to impart.23
Breakfast was at nine o’clock. After this, Cléry prepared the rooms, helped by Madame Tison, and the King gave Louis Charles his lessons. These included instruction in the works of Corneille and Racine, as well as writing; some of the seven-year-old Louis Charles’s exercise books still survive.*101 The phrases he copied are poignant enough: “Nationalement aimé,” for example, emerging rather shakily first as “Nrationnodement ainmé” and then as “Nationnalement aiméen.” The signatures he practised had something of the former regime about them: “Louis” and “Louis Dauphin.” (Nevertheless, Cléry noted how tactful the boy was, never talking about the glories of Versailles and Saint Cloud or even life at the Tuileries.) Marie Antoinette taught her daughter, with Madame Elisabeth responsible for mathematics. It was then time for exercise in the garden, something that was obligatory whatever the weather, so that their rooms could be searched. However, Louis Charles enjoyed ball games with Cléry and noisy play, like hairdressing, also covered up incriminating conversation.
Dinner was at two o’clock, followed by a board or card game, which offered another good opportunity for private or coded talk. After that Louis XVI, watched by the women, fell into a heavy sleep, lost to the world as he snored. Then there were more lessons and play for Louis Charles before bedtime and prayers, which were taken by his mother. The King might read aloud, generally from history books although that often proved a rather depressing experience. Madame Elisabeth concentrated on her prayer book, sometimes reciting the Mass of the day at the Queen’s request. At supper the ladies took it in turn to sit by the Dauphin or to stay with the King. Bedtime was about eleven o’clock.
This account, however, omits one important feature of the royal day: the criers who appeared outside the Temple at seven o’clock in the evening. They were a principal source of news, since the gazettes were only provided when the war was going well for the French. It was from the criers, on 21 September, that they learnt that the French monarchy, having been suspended since mid-August, had officially come to an end. The National Convention, elected by manhood suffrage, now ruled France.
The next day the trumpets sounded. It was announced that there had been a revolution in the calendar as well as in the Constitution. In short, 22 September 1792 had been transformed into Day I of the month of Vendémiaire in Year I of the new era. Furthermore the last five days of September were designated “les jours sanscullotides.” Names underwent their own revolution. Titles were, of course, abolished and the Duc d’Orléans found himself offered a choice of two politically correct names; he chose Philippe Égalité over Publicola, the Roman consul who helped oust Tarquin Superbus. In the Temple, the new Elisabeth Capet unpicked the crowns from the linen of her brother, who was now Louis Capet (owing to the shortage of supplies, she had to wait until he was in bed). This was the surname of the dynasty that had ruled France until 1328; but Louis XVI, not only as a Bourbon but as a lover of history, disliked it; it was the name of his ancestors, not his own.24
The Prussian forces had captured Verdun on 3 September, news that was broken to the prisoners in the Tower by a woman in a house opposite who scrawled it on a big placard and held it up to her window just long enough for them to read it. The Duke of Brunswick predicted that he would be in Paris on 10 October. At rumours that the Prussians were about to invade Paris, the jailer Rocher drew his sabre in the presence of the King and vowed: “If the Prussians come, I will personally kill you.” Instead, an encounter at Valmy on 23 September was inconclusive. Shortly afterwards Brunswick ordered a retreat on that particular front. Louis kept his cool when presented with the reverses of people who were presumed to be his allies and came up with these emollient words: “I have prayed for the French to find that happiness which I have always wanted to procure for them.”25 Nevertheless, the inauguration of the Republic and the Valmy check marked the beginning of those increased tribulations that many already believed must end with Louis Capet’s trial.
The King was separated from his family at the beginning of October and taken alone to the Great Tower. This was a more serious step than the removal of the Cordon Rouge from his breast by Manuel, although that too was intended to signify humiliation. The cries and protests of the Queen and the children at the separation resulted in a dispensation that they were still allowed to eat together, provided everyone spoke in “loud and clear French.” However, pen, ink, paper and pencils were removed (although the royal ladies managed to conceal some potential hiding-places being found in hollowed-out peaches and pockets cut in macaroons). The soap essence for shaving the erstwhile King was suspected of being a poison. Scissors were taken away. Louis watched Madame Elisabeth biting off a thread as she embroidered and observed sadly: “At your lovely house at Montreuil, you had everything you needed. What a contrast!” How could she have any regrets, replied Madame Elisabeth in her ardent way, so long as she was sharing her brother’s misfortunes.26
Cléry and Turgy continued to be their mainstays, for although Cléry was briefly taken away for interrogation he was allowed to return. The news gathered on Turgy’s shopping expeditions would sometimes be passed on by him to Cléry by dint of the men dressing each other’s hair—yet another demonstration of the uses of coiffure. As for Turgy, notes by Madame Elisabeth are still in existence with elaborate instructions for the signs that the serving-men should give: “If the Austrians are successful on the Belgian frontier, place the second finger of the right hand on the right eye . . . Be sure to keep the finger stationary for a longer or shorter time according to the importance of the battle.”27
At the end of October, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth and the children were moved into the new apartments in the Grand Tower. Although the windows here were disagreeably barred, the accommodation itself had been freshly decorated and there were lavatories à l’anglaise, which flushed with water. The room that Marie Antoinette shared with her daughter (Louis Charles was now to share his father’s room) had a striped blue and green wallpaper; there was a green damask bed for Madame Elisabeth, white cotton curtains and valances, and a chest of drawers with a marble top.*102 There were some luxuries. One of the municipal officers, Goret, recalled being shown lockets of the blond hair of her children by Marie Antoinette, after which the erstwhile Queen rubbed her hands with one of the flower-essences she had always loved, passing them in front of Goret’s face so he could share the sweet perfume.*10328 The food continued to be magnificent and to be served on silver; anything that was not eaten was distributed to the servants. There was always wine, which only the King drank.
When all the family in turn fell ill with colds and rheumatic fever, due to the fact that the Tower remained very damp, they were allowed after some argument to call the old royal doctor Le Mounier who was in his mid-seventies. Louis XVI was the sickest of them all, and there was, put crudely, an obvious danger of letting him die while in the custody of the Commune. Who would believe such a death was natural?
In the meantime the discussions over Louis Capet’s trial raged in the Convention itself, while the French armies continued to be victorious. By the end of October, General de Custine had occupied the Rhineland, including Frankfurt and Mainz; in the south, Savoy and Nice had been captured. There was a further victory on 6 November at Jemappes, just west of Mons, for the troops under General Dumouriez, who had led the French at Valmy. Among those who now had to flee were the Archduchess Marie Christine, Count Mercy—and Fersen, who went to Düsseldorf. On 13 November the French pressed forward and entered Brussels. As a result, on 19 November the National Convention felt empowered to offer fraternal aid “to any nation wishing to recover its liberty.” The ideological war was spreading, summed up by a decree of 15 December: “War on the châteaux, peace for the cottages.”30
The favourable progress of the war from the French point of view was not the immediate catalyst of the former King’s trial. This was provided by a coincidental and highly damaging discovery: the so-called iron chest (armoire de fer) in which Louis stored a number of his papers. It was the locksmith employed to install it, Gameau, who gave the game away. The revelations were actually more embarrassing than criminal. Here was the King’s correspondence with Mirabeau, La Fayette and Dumouriez uncovered, rather than any proof of contacts with the Austrians. Barnave, however, was compromised and subsequently arrested. One draft in the King’s handwriting reflected on the Varennes adventure, and insisted that his motives had been honourable: “I had to escape any captivity.”31 But a climate had been created in which the deceitful, manipulative Louis Capet could be portrayed as worthy of the nation’s punishment.
This was a time when a translation of the trial of Charles I, in the English State Trials series, became a bestseller on the Paris bookstalls. One Frenchman told Doctor John Moore proudly that the behaviour of the English in the past—he cited the Wars of the Roses, the massacre of Glencoe and seventeenth-century Ireland—justified their own barbarities in the cause of freedom. At the theatre kings had to be tyrannical and rapacious if portrayed at all; the age of Grétry’s noble Richard I had definitely passed.32
The sound of drums on 11 December announced the arrival of Pétion, accompanied by soldiers. The decree of the Convention was read to “Louis Capet”; he was to be brought to its bar and interrogated. The former King merely commented that “Capet” was inaccurate. At the Convention, he faced a massive denunciation for treason, ending with the events leading to Varennes: “Louis left France as a fugitive in order to return as a conqueror.”
Before his father’s departure, Louis Charles was taken away to join his mother. An act of gratuitous cruelty followed. It was decreed that Louis XVI could either continue to see his children, or agree to leave them with their mother during the coming proceedings against him; but Marie Thérèse and Louis Charles could not be in contact with both their parents. Nobly, Louis XVI decided to put his wife’s passionate feelings for her children first. In this manner, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth and the children embarked on a yet sadder way of life. They were never allowed to visit “Louis Capet” nor have any official communication with him whatsoever. This included 19 December, Marie Thérèse’s fourteenth birthday, when Cléry brought her a little present from her father, an almanac for 1793—but she was not permitted to see him.
It is true that the inventive Cléry started to conceal little crumpled notes in balls of string, once Louis was allowed paper to prepare his defence. The royal ladies responded by letting down their own missives on threads. But in principle, as Marie Thérèse wrote: “He knew nothing of us, nor we of him but through the municipal officers.” The royal women became increasingly dependent either on the kindness of those officers who brought them newspapers (despite the frequently depressing contents) or on the criers outside. One loyal supporter, Dame Launoy, put a magic lantern in the third-floor window of a house near the Tower, and projected letters to give them news.
Commissioner Jacques Lep"tre who took up his position in mid-December was one of those kindly disposed. He realized that the harpsichord in the Tower was in too bad a state for Marie Antoinette to continue her daughter’s lessons and agreed to replace it. Marie Antoinette gave him the name of the man she had generally used and a harpsichord, according to the accounts, duly arrived. A scrap of music was found there. It was Haydn’s La Reine de France, one of his symphonies of the mid-1780s, which had been the Queen’s favourite. “How times have changed,” said Marie Antoinette. “And we could not stop our tears,” wrote Lep"tre.33
Even with Cléry’s scraps of paper, and the criers, a kind of unreality descended on the women. They were unaware of the long hours spent by the King with the gallant men who had agreed to act as his counsels. Chrétien de Malesherbes behaved with great style, addressing his master as “Sire” and “Majesté.” When asked at the Convention what made him so brave, he replied: “Contempt for you and contempt for death.” Although Louis told Malesherbes that they should concern themselves with his trial “as though I could win,” two weeks after it started he spent Christmas Day preparing his last will and testament.34 This was no time for “Capets”; he wrote it as Louis XVI King of France and he gave the correct date in the Christian calendar, having no truck with “Nivôse,” as the month that began in late December had become. In every way it was the document of a committed son of the Catholic Church, and it also preached the Christian doctrine of forgiveness, especially to his son. If Louis Charles should be “so unfortunate” as ever to become King, he should dedicate his whole life to his people’s happiness; on no account was he to seek vengeance on his father’s behalf. Louis remembered his other relations, including his brothers, his faithful servants such as Hüe and Cléry, and he thanked his lawyers.
The King wrote with special loving kindness of his wife, commending his children to her: “I have never doubted her maternal tenderness.” He also begged Marie Antoinette to forgive him “all the ills she has suffered for my sake and for any grief that I may have caused her in the course of our marriage as she may be certain that I hold nothing against her.”*104
The next day the trial began and the case was made for the defence. It was certainly not without merit in purely legal terms. Louis had been granted inviolability by the National Assembly; the veto had actually been awarded to him by the Constituent Assembly and was already in place at the Legislative Assembly before the bloodshed of 10 August began. As to the charges of treason, Gouverneur Morris commented drily to Thomas Jefferson on 21 December: “To a person less intimately acquainted than you are with the History of human affairs, it would seem strange that the mildest monarch who ever filled the French throne . . . should be prosecuted as one of the most nefarious Tyrants that ever disgraced the Annals of human nature.”35
But of course none of this was relevant to that extremist party nicknamed “the Mountain” after their high position on the seats of the Convention. Many of these argued that a trial in itself was totally unnecessary. Unlike the Girondins who saw the value of keeping the King alive as a hostage, Robespierre took the line that Louis Capet had already condemned himself to death by his actions.*105 The young revolutionary orator Saint-Just in his maiden speech thundered: “Louis cannot be judged, he is already judged . . . He is condemned, or if he is not, the sovereignty of the Republic is not absolute.” He should be killed not for what he had done, but for what he was. This was, in fact, the best if the most ruthless answer to the fact that Louis Capet’s trial flagrantly ignored the New Criminal Code of 1791; this decreed that an indictment by a special jury of accusation composed of several participants had to take place before there could be a trial.37
When voting began, the guilt of Louis was easily established. In total, 691 voted that he had conspired against the state, a few abstained but no one voted against. The question of the penalty that the former King should pay was far more complicated. There were arguments for confinement until the end of the war, followed by banishment. Thomas Paine, who had been elected to the Convention as a revolutionary hero, made a plea for Louis and his family to be sent to America at the end of the war. There, like the exiled Stuarts, they would sink into obscurity. Referring to the King’s military support for independence, he besought the French not to let the tyrannical English have the satisfaction of seeing Louis die on the scaffold, “the man who helped my much loved America to burst her fetters.”38
This was a move supported by Gouverneur Morris and the new ambassador to the United States, Edmund Genet, brother of Madame Campan. At one point the Girondin leaders even thought that Genet would be the man “to take Capet and his family with him” to the United States. The beguiling vision—of Louis happy as a country gentleman in Virginia, with Marie Antoinette in a gracious porticoed antebellum house recreating the life of the Petit Trianon,*106 the children growing up as good American citizens—was not, however, destined to be fulfilled. Marat denounced Paine for his Quaker softness—the Quakers, among whom Paine had been brought up, being well-known opponents of capital punishment. Danton put it more pithily: revolutions could not be made with rosewater.39
In the end, after many voting complications, the death penalty was passed on 16 January 1793 by a narrow majority. The newly named Philippe Égalité, Louis’ cousin and his closest adult male relative in France, was among those who voted for execution. In his own words Philippe Égalité was “convinced that all who have attacked or will attack the sovereignty of the people deserve death.” When Louis was told of the verdict on the following day, it was the behaviour of his cousin that visibly pained him. His suffering was understandable. Even Orléans’ own set was horrified by the vote, people weeping at his “dishonour” and his own ADC throwing his uniform in the fire.40
There was still a question of a reprieve but that was rejected by a majority of seventy. It was not until 2 p.m. on Sunday, 20 January, that the former King was told that he was going to be put to death the following day, by the swift, humane guillotine. Louis asked for three days in which to prepare himself spiritually. This was denied him although a non-juror priest of Irish ancestry, the Abbé Edgeworth de Firmin, was admitted to the Tower. Otherwise Louis consoled himself with reading the account of the execution of Charles I. That evening it was the voices of the criers beneath the Tower that told the Queen and the rest of the royal family the fearful news. At this point the Convention relented. The family was allowed down to the King’s apartments at seven o’clock.
It was a piteous scene. They had not seen Louis XVI for six weeks and Marie Thérèse found her father “much changed.” But when Louis wept, it was not from fear, but for the sadness of parting from them and the tragedy of the situation into which he must perforce abandon them. Accepting his fate, Louis had asked the Convention to arrange for his family to be retired from the Tower “to a place it thinks proper.” But who knew when that would be achieved and what that place might be? Nevertheless the King urged on his son the need to forgive the enemies who were about to cause his death, and he gave his children his final blessing.41
Marie Antoinette begged for them all to spend the night, this last night, together. Louis refused. He had much to do to prepare himself and needed peace. The scene as described by Cléry was heart-rending. The Queen huddled against the King, holding Louis Charles. The little boy clutched both his parents’ hands tight, kissing them and crying. Elisabeth too clung to her brother. Marie Thérèse shrieked aloud.
In the end Louis only persuaded his family to leave by promising to see them again the next morning for a final farewell. “I am not saying goodbye,” he said. “Be sure that I shall see you again at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Why not seven o’clock?” pursued the Queen.
“Seven o’clock then.”
“Do you promise?” cried the Queen.
“I promise,” replied the King. He tore himself away and went into his bedroom. The sobs of the departing children reached Cléry through the walls.42
But Louis did not—could not—bring himself to keep his word. The three women lay sleepless upstairs, Marie Antoinette hardly having the strength to put her son to bed. But the man who came to see them at six o’clock the next morning wanted to fetch a prayer book, not conduct them to the King. There was an extraordinary silence over the city that morning, explained by the fact that the main gates had been locked and the usual bustle was therefore stilled. It was the sound of drumming shortly before half past ten, followed by loud “shouts of joy” from the frantic spectators, that told the listeners in the Tower that the King was dead.43
Marie Antoinette could not speak. She was imprisoned in her own silent world of agony. But Elisabeth broke out, amid the piercing cries of the children: “The monsters! They are satisfied now.”