CHAPTER XX

_WATTIGNIES_

MONDAY, the 14th of October:—

[Sidenote: Oct. 14, 1793. 6 a.m.]

The fate of the Queen and of the Republic had each come to a final and critical issue when the light broke, dully in either place, over Paris and over the pastures of the frontier. There the army lay to arms in the valley, with Coburg entrenched upon the ridge above them, and beyond him the last famine of Maubeuge: from dawn the French lines could hear, half a day’s march to the northward, the regular boom of the bombardment. But Carnot was now come.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 14, 1793. In Paris, 8 a.m.]

In Paris, when it was broad day, the chief Court above the prison was prepared.

The populace had crammed the side galleries of the great room and were forming a further throng, standing in the space between the doors and the bar. The five Judges, Herman the chief, filed on to the Bench; a little below them and on their right a jury of fifteen men were empanelled. It was on the courage, the conviction or the fanaticism of these that the result would turn.

They presented, as they sat there awaiting the prisoner, a little model of the violent egalitarian mood which had now for a year and more driven the military fury of the Republic. Among them would be seen the refined and somewhat degraded face of a noble who had sat in the earlier Parliaments and who had drifted as Orleans had drifted—but further than had Orleans. There also were the unmistakable eyes of precision which were those of an optician, a maker of instruments. There were, resting on the rail of the box, the firm hands of a great surgeon (Souberbielle). A few of the common people were mingled with these: contractors also, prosperous men, and master-carpenters. There was a hatter there, and a barber, a man who had made violins, and another who painted pictures for the rich. Of such elements was the body comprised which had now to determine so much in the history of Europe. Above them a presiding figure, Herman the Judge, with his dark aquiline face, controlled, them all. They looked all of them towards the door that led from the cells below, where two warders came upward through it, leading between them the Queen.

She also as she entered saw new things. The silence and the darkness of her long imprisonment fell from her: the noise of the streets came in from the windows before her; she heard the rumour and she saw the movement of the populace which—save for that brief midnight drive two months ago—had been quite cut off from her since last she had shrunk from the mob on the evening when she had heard the gate of the Temple bolted behind her carriage. After that hush which had been so dreadfully divided by evil upon evil, she came out suddenly into the sound of the city and into the general air. In that interval the names of months and of days, the mutual salutations of men, religion and the very habit of life had changed. In that interval also the nation had passed from the shock of arms to unimagined crimes, to a most unstable victory, to a vision of defeat and perhaps of annihilation. France was astrain upon the edge of a final deliverance or of a final and irretrievable disaster. Its last fortress was all but fallen, all its resources were called out, all its men were under arms, over the fate of the frontier hung a dreadful still silence. In the very crisis of this final doubt and terror the Queen stood arraigned.

The women lowered their knitting-needles and kept them still. The little knot of Commissioners sitting with Counsel for the State, the angry boys in the crowd who could remember wounds or the death of comrades, stretched forward to catch sight of her as she came up the stairs between her guards: they were eager to note if there had been any change.

She had preserved her carriage, which all who knew her had regarded since her childhood as the chief expression of her soul. She still moved with solemnity and with that exaggerated but unflinching poise of the head which, in the surroundings of Versailles, had seemed to some so queenly, to others so affected, which here, in her last hours, seemed to all, as she still preserved it, so defiant. For the rest she was not the same. Her glance seemed dull and full of weariness; the constant loss of blood which she had suffered during those many weeks spent below ground had paled her so that the artificial, painted red of her cheeks was awful in that grey morning, and her still ample hair was ashen and touched with white, save where some traces of its old auburn could be perhaps distinguished.

She was in black. A little scarf of lace was laid with exactitude about her shoulders and her breast, and on her head she wore a great cap which a woman who loved her, the same who had served her in her cell, put on her as she went to her passion. The pure white of this ornament hung in great strings of lawn on either side, and round it and beneath it she had wound the crape of her widowhood. So dressed, and so standing at the bar, so watched in silence by so many eyes, she heard once more the new sound which yesterday she had first learned to hate: the hard and nasal voice of Herman. He asked her formally her name. She answered in a voice which was no longer strong, but which was still clear and well heard in that complete silence:

“Marie Antoinette of Austria, some thirty-eight years old, widow to Louis Capet the King of France.”

To the second formal question on the place of her first arrest, that:

“It was in the place where the sittings of the National Assembly were held.”

The clerk, a man of no great learning, wrote his heading: “The 23rd day of the first month of the fourth year of Freedom,” and when he had done this he noted her replies, and Herman’s short questions also: his bidding to the jury that they must be firm, to the prisoner that she must be attentive.

Into the clerk’s writing there crept, as there will into that of poor men, certain grievous errors of grammar which in an earlier (and a later) time would not have appeared in the record of the meanest Court trying a tramp for hunger; but it was the Revolution and they were trying a Queen, so everything was strange; and this clerk called himself Fabricius, which had a noble sound—but it was not his name.

This clerk read the list of witnesses and the indictment out loud.

When these formalities were over they brought a chair. The Queen sat down by leave of the Court and the trial began. She saw rising upon her right a new figure of a kind which she had not known in all her life up to the day when the door of the prison had shut her out from the noise and change of the world. It was a figure of the Terror, Fouquier Tinville. His eyes were steadfast, the skin of his face was brown, hard and strong; he was a hired politician covered with the politician’s outer mask of firmness. Within he was full of the politician’s hesitation and nervous inconstancy. A genuine poverty and a politician’s hunger for a salary had been satisfied by the post of Public Prosecutor. He earned that salary with zeal and with little discernment, and therefore, when the time came, he also was condemned to die. It was he now in this forenoon who opened against the Queen.

His voice was harsh and mechanical: his speech was long, dull and violent: rhetorical with that scenic and cardboard rhetoric which is the official commonplace of all tribunals. The Widow Capet was a Messalina; she was a leech; she was a Merovingian Tyrant; she was a Medicis. She had held relations with the “Man called King” of Bohemia and Hungary; she had urged Capet on to all his crimes. She had sent millions to aid her family in their war against the French people. She had woven the horrid plot of the 10th of August, which nothing but incredible valour had defeated. She was the main enemy which the new and angry Freedom for which he spoke had had to meet and to conquer.

Apart from its wearisome declamation the accusation was true; save that—through no fault of her own, poor woman!—she had not aided the foreign cause with gold, all the story was evident and publicly known. She sat as near this orator as is a nurse to a bedside. She heard him with her suffering and disdainful face quite fixed and unmoved, save at one point: the mention of her son.

Fouquier Tinville was sane: he saw the crass absurdity of Hébert’s horrors, he barely touched upon them very hurriedly (and as the rapid and confused words escaped him, her lips twitched with pain), but even as he did so he knew he had given the defence a hold.

It is held on principle in French Courts that an impartial presentation of the truth cannot be obtained unless witnesses are heard in a chance sequence, not divided into friends and foes as with us, but each (such is the theory) telling what he believes to be the truth. Even in these political trials of the Terror (which were rather Courts-Martial or condemnations than trials) the rule was observed, and when Fouquier sat down the file of witnesses began.

The parade was futile. For plain political facts known to the whole world no list of witnesses were needed, nor could their evidence be of the least avail. Moreover, that evidence was lacking. The witnesses defiled one after the other, each vaguer than the last, to prove (and failing to prove) things that were commonplaces to all Europe. Long past mid-day the empty procession continued through the drowsy hours past one o’clock and two: remembering trifles of her conduct true and false. To every assertion as the Judge repeated it (true or false) she answered quietly by a denial: that denial was now false, now true.

Even if the Revolutionary Tribunal could have subpœnaed Mallet or the Emperor or Fersen, it would have meant little to the result. Her guilt, if it was guilt so to scheme against the nation, was certain: what yet remained in doubt was the political necessity of such a trial at such a moment, the limit of hardihood in her judges and the possible effect in a democracy of public sympathy at some critical phase of the pleadings: and much more potent than any of these three, because it included them all, was the news that might come at any moment from the frontier and from the hunger of Maubeuge—no news came.

Last of these witnesses Hébert, all neat and powdered, presented his documents and put forward his abominations, his fixed idea of incest. The public disgust might here have turned the trial. There was a stir all round: her friends began to hope. As for the officials, they could not stop Hébert’s mouth, but Herman was careful to omit the customary repetition: he was hurrying on to the next witness when a juryman of less wit than his fellows and filled with the enormous aberrations of hate, pressed the charge.

The Queen would not reply. She half rose from her chair and cried in a high voice: “I appeal to every mother here,” and then sank back again.

The crowd in the galleries began to move and murmur, the women raised their voices against the angry orders of the ushers and of the Bench demanding silence. Away, dining beyond the Seine, Robespierre, hearing of it, broke a plate at table in his anger, and thought Hébert’s lunacy had saved her. A further witness, though he spoke of the flight to Varennes, could hardly be heard, and spoke quite unheeded; and when he had concluded, the Court abruptly rose in the midst of the commotion, hubbub and change.

The Queen was led to her cell, keeping as she left her place, in spite of her hopeless fatigue, the steady step wherewith she had entered; and as she passed she heard one woman in the press sneering at her pride.

It was three o’clock. The first act in that long agony had lasted, without food or breathing time, for seven hours.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 14, 1793. Before Maubeuge, 8 a.m.]

While the Republic thus held the old world prisoner in Paris and tortured it in the person of the Queen, out on the frontier in the water-meadows of Avesnes, the Republic lay in its chief peril from the old world free and armed. Coburg and every privilege held the crest of the hills invincibly, and Maubeuge was caught fast, unreachable beyond the entrenchments of that ridge.

Carnot, looking westward down the valley of the Helpe, saw the deep orchards laden with October, nourished by the small and very winding stream. He saw the last French frontier hamlets and their mills: St. Hilaire, Dompierre, Tenieres, dwindling away to where, far off in its broad trench, ran the Sambre.

Before him also in this valley, as he looked westward down it, he saw stretched for some ten miles the encampment of his army: bivouac after bivouac, one beyond the other along the lines, and smoke rising from them. Tall hedges, not yet bare, divided the floor of the valley and the village grounds: here also Cæsar had marched through against the Nervii: for this corner of Europe is a pack of battlefields. Malplaquet lay just before the army; within a march, Fleurus; within sound of cannon, Jemappes.

Up above them beyond that wood of Avesnes, the line of the heights along the sky, was the enemy. It had loomed so dark before the late, dull and rainy dawn, that they had seen the notches in that line which were the emplacement of guns. The early afternoon had shone upon the sides of the hills, and the French outposts had seen the outposts of the enemy busy in the little villages that mark the foot of the slopes: St. Vaast, Dourlers, Foursies. And all day long boomed to the north behind the hills the sullen guns before Maubeuge. At any hour that dull repeated sound might cease, and it would mean that the last fortress had fallen.

All that day Carnot passed in silence. The troops, some last detachments of which had but just marched in, lay dully in such repose as soldiers can steal: a jumble of forty patchwork battalions, militia, regulars, loud volunteers, old stark gunners; they listened to the distant and regular thunder of the siege. In some stations the few horses were grooming: in others, fewer still, the rare guns were cleaned.

[Sidenote: Oct. 14, 1793. Before Maubeuge, 4 p.m.]

An hour before dusk the six generals were called to Carnot’s tent, and here and there the bugles roused the troops called for reconnaissance. These few detachments crossed the woods, pierced gaps in the hedges[43] to prepare the advance of the morrow, noted and exchanged shots with the outposts of the evening, and at evening they retired. As they retired Carnot gave orders to the guns. Out of effective range, vague and careless of a target, they fired and proclaimed the presence of a relieving army to the besieged.

Footnote 43:

So on the same field had Cæsar been compelled to clear the hedgerows. So little does the French peasantry change in a thousand years, and so tenacious is each French province of its customs.

Maubeuge in that still evening, during a lull of the siege-pieces, heard those French guns, and Ferrant and the general officers with him counselled a sortie. Only Chancel stood out; but Chancel was in command of the camp of Maubeuge, and his authority was unassailable. He did not distinguish the French fire, he thought it Austrian; no instinct moved him. Therefore all the next day while the battle was engaged, the garrison of Maubeuge failed to move; and later, for this error, Chancel was tried and killed.[44]

Footnote 44:

And the other version is that Chancel was for moving but that Ferrant would not. Choose.

When the guns had been thus fired, the reconnaissance ended. The troops fell back again through the wood of Avesnes and slept the last sleep before battle. In Paris during that same evening, the long trial of the Queen proceeded.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 14, 1793. In Paris, 5 p.m.]

At five, just in that hour when Carnot was recalling his scouts and ordering that warning cannon, the Court gathered and the prisoner was recalled.

In her cell she had not been silent.

As a great actress in an interval between her hardest lines will refuse repose and will demand rather comment or praise, so had she filled this little respite of two hours with questions and with doubts professed. She had dwelt upon the forms of the trial, she had begged her counsel to reassure her. She had despised the evidence. She had said she feared but one witness—Manuel—and indeed all who could have spoken as eye-witnesses to a hundred notorious truths were now over the frontier or dead.

With her entry the trial was resumed and the file of witnesses continued. It was as monotonous and as vague as before. Even Manuel, whom she had feared, was vague, and the very servants of the prison (though they had been witnesses to conspiracy) were uncertain and rambling. And this fatuity of the witnesses who were so solemnly and so strictly examined did not proceed from the turmoil of the time alone, nor even from the certitude which all then had (and which history has now) upon the past action of the Queen in cherishing the hope of foreign domination and in procuring it: rather did it proceed from the fact that these dreadful days were filled not with a judicial but with a political action, and that the Court was met not to establish truths at once unprovable and glaring, but to see whether or no the Revolution could dare to condemn the prisoner. It was an act of War and a challenge to What lay entrenched up there before Maubeuge, training its guns on the last hope, the ragged army in the valley of Avesnes below.

If all the witnesses which history possesses to-day, if Moleville, Fersen, Mallet, could have been brought into that Court and have had the Truth dragged from them, it would have affected the issue very little. One thing could alone affect that issue, the news of victory: and no news came. All reports from the frontier had ceased.

The lights in the Court were lit, smoky and few. The air, already foul from the large concourse, grew heavy even for the free; for the sickened prisoner it became intolerable as the night hours drew in—six dark interminable hours. She heard the succeeding witnesses distantly, more distantly. Her head was troubled and her injured eyesight failed her. It was very late. The droning of the night was in her ears. She vaguely knew at last that there was a movement around her and that the Court was rising. She asked faintly for water. Busne, the officer in guard of her, brought it to her and she drank. As he supported her with some respect down the short passage to her cell he heard her murmuring: “I cannot see.... I cannot see.... I have come to the end....”

She lay down when her doors had received her, and just before midnight she fell asleep. She slept deeply and for the last time.

* * * * *

Tuesday, October 15.

[Sidenote: Oct. 15, 1793. Before Maubeuge, 6 a.m.]

A little before dawn the French bugles upon the frontier roused the troops of Avesnes; their calls ran down the line, they passed from the Diane to the Générale, the woods before them sent back echoes, and soon the army moved. Far off upon the left Fromentin, upon the far right Duquesnoy, began marching forwards and inwards, converging, but the main body in the centre took the high road, which, if they could force its passage, would lead them straight to Maubeuge.

The sun was still level over the glinting wet fields when Carnot came to the summit of the long swell whence could be perceived, over an intervening hollow, the village of Dourlers, and above it the level fringe of trees which held the Austrian cannon; an impregnable crest upon whose security Coburg and the Allies founded the certitude of victory. The guns began.

Among the batteries of the French (too few for their task) two batteries, one of sixteen-pounders, the other of twelve, were the gift of the city of Paris. By some accident these, though ill manned, silenced the Austrian fire at one critical and central point above the Dourlers itself and close to the high road. Whether the French aptitude for this arm had helped to train the volunteers of the city, or whether these had such a leaven of trained men as sufficed to turn the scale, or whether (as is more probable) some error or difficulty upon the opposing slope or some chance shot had put the invaders out of action, cannot be known. Carnot seized upon the moment and ordered the charge. As his columns advanced to carry Dourlers he sent word at full speed to either wing that each must time itself by the centre, and forbade an advance upon the left or right until the high road should be forced and the centre of the Austrian position pierced or confused.

As he stood there looking down from the height where the road bifurcates, all the battle was plain to him, but his sapper’s eye for a plan watched the wings much more anxiously than they watched the centre before him. The stunted spire of Wattignies a long way off to the east, the clump that hid St. Remy to the west, marked strong bodies of the enemy, and, in the open plateau beyond, their numerous cavalry could crush either extremity of his line (which at either extremity was weak) should either be tempted forward before the centre had succeeded. The front was long—over five miles—he could not enforce sagacity nor even be certain of intelligence, and as he doubted and feared the action of his distant lieutenants, he saw the centre advancing beneath his eyes.

The Austrian cannon had abandoned the duel. The French fine approached Dourlers, deployed, and began the ascent. A sudden and heavy fire of musketry from the hollow road and from the hedges met the sixteen thousand as they charged; they did not waver, they reached the garden walls, and closed until, to those watching from the hill, the attempt was confused and hidden by a rolling smoke and the clustered houses of the village. It was past mid-morning.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 15, 1793. In Paris, 7.30 a.m.]

In Paris they had wakened the Queen, tardily. She wondered perhaps to see Busne not there. He had suffered arrest in the night; he was detained to see if he could tell the Court or the Committee some secret gathered from his prisoner. It was under another guard that she left her cell.

It was nearly nine before the Court assembled in the dull light, and later before the futile drag of evidence was renewed.

Whether sleep had revived her, or whether some remnant of her old energy had returned to her for such an occasion, no further weakness was perceived in the Queen. She sat, as she had sat all the day before until her faintness had come upon her, very ill, pale, and restrained, but erect and ready for every reply. Moreover, in that morning the weary monotony of such hours was broken by an incident which illuminated, though it made more bitter, the last of her sad days; for after D’Estaing, the Admiral, had been heard to no purpose, another noble, also a prisoner, was called; and as she saw his face she remembered better times, when the struggle was keen and not hopeless, and when this bewildering Beast that called itself now “Freedom,” now “The Nation,” had been tamed by the class which still governed Europe outside and which in that day controlled her kingdom also. It was Latour du Pin, the soldier who had been responsible for the repression of the Mutiny at Nancy three years—three centuries—before.

He still lived. Against no man had ’93 a better ground for hate, and indeed the time came when the Revolution sent him down also to meet his victims under the earth, but so far his commanding head was firm upon his shoulders. He enjoyed, as did all the prisoners of that time, the full use of his wealth. He was clothed and fed in the manner of his rank. He entered, therefore, with pride and with that mixture of gaiety and courage upon which, since the wars of religion, all his kind had justly plumed themselves: and as he entered he bowed with an excessive ceremony to the Queen.

The Judge asked him the formal question: Whether he recognised the prisoner? He bowed again and answered: “Indeed I know this Lady very well;” and in a few moments of his examination he defended himself and her with a disdainful ease that brought Versailles back vividly out of its tomb.

Revived or stung by such a memory, the Queen replied to question after question exactly and even with some power: upon her frivolities, her expenses, her Trianon—all the legends of debauch which were based upon that very real and very violent fugue of pleasure in which she had wasted her brilliant years. The close of that dialogue alone has a strict interest for history, when Herman came at last to the necklace. Trianon had been on his lips a dozen times, and as he spoke the word he remembered that other fatal thing:—

“Was it not in Trianon that you first came to know the woman La Motte?”

“I never saw her!”

“Was she not your victim in the affair of the necklace?”

“She could not be, for I had never known her!”

“You still deny it?”

“I have no plan to deny. It is the truth, and I shall always say the same.”

It is a passage of great moment, for here indeed the prisoner said precisely what was true and precisely what all, even those who would befriend her, least believed to be true. She would pretend a love for the French and a keen regard for their glory—even for the success of their armies. She would pretend to have obeyed the King and not to have led him; to have desired nothing for her son, but only the welfare of the people. Trapped and abandoned, she thought every answer, however false, legitimate; but in that one thing in which her very friends had doubted her, another spirit possessed her and her words were alive with truth.

After that episode no further movement followed. There was opened before the Court (as the law compelled) her little pocket and the trinkets taken from her on the day of her imprisonment: the poor relics of her affection—the lock of hair, the miniature—were laid before the Judges. They heard Simon, the cobbler, in whose house her son was lodged—perhaps she looked more curiously at his face than at others—but he had nothing to say. They heard the porter of the Temple and sundry others who had seen, or pretended to have seen, her orders for the payments of sundry thousands—but all that business was empty and all those hours were wasted: it was not upon such vanities that the mind of Paris and of the crowded Court was turned, but upon the line of Flemish hills a long way off and upon the young men climbing up against the guns.

Paris and the mob in the street outside that Court of Justice and the hundreds crammed within it strained to hear, not Valazé, nor Tiset, nor any other useless witness, but some first breath of victory that might lift off them the oppression of those days; nay, some roaring news of defeat and of Coburg marching upon them: then at least before their vision was scattered by the invader, they could tear this Austrian woman from her too lenient Judges for a full vengeance before they themselves and that which they had achieved should die. At the best or at the worst they panted for a clear knowledge of their fortune; but on through the day and well into the afternoon, when the Court rose for its brief interval, no hint or rumour even had come to Paris from before Maubeuge.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 15, 1793. Before Maubeuge, 10.30 a.m.]

Carnot had come down the hill from the fork of the roads; he, and Jourdan beside him, followed behind the assault, bringing the headquarters of that general plan some half-mile forward. So they knew that the village of Dourlers was held. It was noon before the place was secured, and now all depended upon the action of the extreme wings.

It was certain that the struggle for this central village would be desperate: all depended upon the extreme wings. If these (and both of them) could hold hard and neither advance too far up the slope nor suffer (either of them) a beating-in, then the work at Dourlers would be decisive. And indeed the village was won, lost, and won and lost again: all the hard work was there. The French carried it, they went beyond, they were almost upon the ridge above it. In the upland field below the crest of wood the Austrian cavalry under Nuffling struck them in flank, and they were disordered. They were back in the village of Dourlers, and the fight for it was from house to house and from window to window. Twice it was cleared, twice lost. The French carry to an immortal memory a lad of fourteen who slipped forward in those attacks, got in behind the lines of the Hungarian Grenadiers who held the market-place, and, in lanes beyond, drummed the charge to make his comrades think that some were already so far forward and thus to urge them on. Many years after in digging up that ground his little bones were found buried side-long with the bones of the tall Hungarian men, and he has now his statue beating the charge and looking out towards the frontier from the gateways of Avesnes.

I have said that the horns of that crescent, the extreme wings, were ordered to be cautious, and warned that their caution alone could save the fight; for if they went too far while Dourlers in the centre was still doubtful, that centre would certainly be thrown back by such a general as Coburg, who knew very well the breaking-point of a concave line. The fourth attack upon Dourlers was prepared and would have succeeded when Carnot heard that Fromentin, up on the far left, up on the extreme tip of the horn of that crescent, had carried his point of the ridge, and, having carried it, had had the folly to pursue; he had found himself upon the plateau above (an open plateau bare of trees and absolutely bare of cover) with his irregulars all boiling, and even his regulars imagining success. Weak in cavalry, commanding men untrained to any defensive, he found opposed to him the cavalry reserve of the enemy—a vast front of horse suddenly charging. That cavalry smashed him all to pieces. His regulars here and there formed squares, his irregulars tried to, they were sabred and galloped down. They lost but four guns (though four counted in so under-gunned an army), but, much worse, they lost their confidence altogether. They got bunched into the combes and hollows, the plateau was cleared. They in their turn were pursued, and it would have been a rout but for two accidents: the first accident was the presence of a fresh reserve of French cavalry, small indeed, but very well disciplined, strict and ready, certain Hussars who in a red flash (their uniform was red) charged on their little horses and for a moment stopped the flood of the enemy. The check so given saved the lives though not the position of the French left wing. It was beaten. It was caved in.

The second accident was the early close of an October day. The drizzling weather, the pall of clouds, curtained in an early night, and the left thus failing were not wholly destroyed: but their failure had ruined the value of the central charge upon Dourlers. The final attack, upon that central village was countermanded; the Austrians did not indeed pursue the retreat of the French centre from its walls and lanes, but the conception of the battle had failed.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 15, 1793. In Paris, 5 p.m.]

In the Court-room, in Paris, during those hours, while the Judges raised the sitting, the Queen sat waiting for their return; they brought her soup which she drank; the evening darkened, the Judges reappeared, and the trial began anew.

The witnesses called upon that last evening, when the lights were lit and the long night had begun, were for the most part those who had come personally into the presence or into the service of the Queen. Michonis especially, who was rightly under arrest for attempting her rescue, appeared; Brunier appeared, the doctor who had attended to the children in the Temple. The farce went on. The night grew deeper, the witnesses succeeded each other. All that they had to say was true. Nothing they said could be proved. One put forward that she had written some note asking if the Swiss could be relied upon to shoot down the people. She had said and written one hundred of such things. Her counsel, who were mere lawyers, worried about the presentation of the document—meanwhile night hastened onwards, and behind their veil of October cloud the stars continually turned.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 15, 1793. Before Maubeuge, 10.30 p.m.]

Upon the frontier the damp evening and the closed night had succeeded one the other, and all along the valley of the little river it was foggy and dark. The dead lay twisted where they had fallen during that unwrought fight, and a tent pitched just behind the lines held the staff and Carnot. He did not sleep. There was brought to him in those midnight hours a little note, galloped in from the far south; he read it and crumpled it away. It is said to have been the news that the lines of Weissembourg were forced—and so they were. The Prussians were free to pass those gates between the Ardennes and the Vosges. Then Maubeuge was the last hold remaining: the very last of all.

Jourdan proposed, in that decisive Council of a few moments, held under that tent by lantern light in the foggy darkness while the day of their defeat was turning into the morrow, some plan for reinforcing the defeated left and the playing of some stalemate of check and countercheck against the enemy; but Carnot was big with new things. He conceived an adventure possible only from his knowledge of what he commanded; he dismissed the mere written traditions of war which Jourdan quoted, because he knew that now—and within twelve hours—all must certainly be lost or won. He took counsel with his own great soul, and called, from his knowledge of the French, upon the savagery and the laughter of the French service. He knew what abominable pain his scheme must determine. He knew by what wrench of discipline or rather of cruelty the thing must be done, but more profoundly did he know the temper of young French people under arms to whom the brutality of superiors is native and who meet it by some miraculous reserve of energy and of rebellious smiles.

Those young French people, many half-mutinous, most of them ill-clothed, so many wounded, so many more palsied by the approach of death—all drenched under the October drizzle, all by this time weary of any struggle whatsoever, were roused in that night before their sleep was deep upon them.

Carnot had determined to choose 7000, to forbid them rest, to march them right along his positions and add them to the 8000 on his right extreme wing, and then at morning, if men so treated could still charge, to charge with such overwhelming and unexpected forces on the right, where no such effort was imagined, and so turn the Austrian line.

There were no bugle-calls, no loud voice was permitted; but all the way down the line for five miles orders were given by patrols whose men had not slept for thirty hours. They roused the volunteers and the cursing regulars from the first beginnings of their sleep; they broke into the paltry comfort of chance bivouac fires; they routed men out of the straw in barns and stables; they kicked up the half-dead, half-sleeping boys who lay in the wet grass marshes of the Tarsy; and during all that night, by the strength which only this service has found it possible to conceive (I mean a mixture of the degrading and the exalted, of servitude and of vision), from the centre and from the left—from the forces which had been shot down before Dourlers and from the men who had fled before the Austrian cavalry when Fromentin had failed—a corps was gathered together under the thick night, drawn up in column and bidden march through the darkness by the lane that led towards the right of the position. With what deep-rooted hatred of commandment simmering in them those fellows went after thirty hours of useless struggle to yet another unknown blind attempt, not historians but only men who have suffered such orders know. They were 7000; the thick night, I say, was upon them; the mist lay heavy all over the wet land; and as they went through the brushwood and chance trees that separated the centre from the right of the French position, they heard the drip of water from the dead, hanging leaves. Their agony seemed to them quite wanton and purposeless. They were halted at last mechanically like sheep at various points under various sleeping farms in various deserted, tiny, lightless villages. The night was far spent; they could but squat despairing, each squadron at its halting-place waiting for the dawn and for new shambles. Meanwhile it was thick night.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 15, 1793. In Paris, 11.30 p.m.]

It was nearing midnight in Paris, but none yet felt fatigue, neither the Judges nor their prisoner; nor did any in the straining audience that watched the slow determination of this business suffer the approach of sleep. The list of the witnesses was done and their tale was ended.

Herman leant forward, hawk-faced, and asked the Queen in the level judicial manner if she had anything to add to her defence before her advocates should plead. She answered complaining of the little time that had been afforded her to defend—and the last words she spoke to her Judges were still a vain repetition that she had acted only as the wife of the King and that she had but obeyed his will.

The Bench declared the examination of the witnesses closed. For something like an hour that bronzed and hollow-faced man next by her, Fouquier Tinville, put forward the case for the Government; he was careful to avoid the mad evidence Hébert had supplied. When he sat down, the Defence spoke last—as has since Rome been the custom or rather the obvious justice of French procedure; so that the last words a Jury may hear shall be words for the prisoner at the bar—but this was not a trial, though all the forms of trial were observed. Chauveau-Lagarde spoke first, his colleague next. When they had ceased they were arrested and forbidden to leave the building, lest certain words the Queen had whispered should mean some communication with the invader.

The summing up (for summing up was still permitted, and a century of Revolutionary effort was to pass before the pressure of the Bench upon the Jury should be gradually destroyed) was what the angers of that night expected and received. It was three o’clock in the morning before the four questions were put to the Jury. Four questions drawn indeed from the Indictment but avoiding its least proved or least provable clauses. Had there been relations between the Executive and the foreign enemies of the State, and promises of aid to facilitate the advance of their armies? If so, was Marie Antoinette of Austria proved to have been privy to that plan?

The Jury left the Hall. A murmur of tongues loosened rose all around. The prisoner was led out beyond the doors of the chamber. For one long unexpected hour she was so detained while the Jury were still absent; then a signal was given to her guards and they led her in.

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. In Paris, 4 a.m.]

The cold violence of formal law still dominated the lawyers. Herman put forth the common exhortation of judges against applause or blame. He read to her the conclusions of the Jury: they were affirmative upon every point of the four. He asked her with that same cold violence of formality, after the Public Prosecutor had demanded the penalty of death set down for such actions as hers in the new Penal Code, whether she had anything to say against her sentence. She shook her head.

She was at the end of human things. She stood and saw the Judges upon the Bench conferring for a moment, she stood to hear her sentence read to her, and as she heard it she watched them in their strange new head-dress all plumes, and she fingered upon the rail before her with the gestures ladies learn in fingering the keys: she swept her fingers gently as though over the keys of an instrument, and soon the reading of the sentence was done and they led her away. It was past four o’clock in the morning.

On the terrace of his castle in Germany that night George of Hesse saw the White Lady pass, the Ghost without a face that is the warning of the Hapsburgs, and the hair of his head stood up.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. Before Maubeuge, 4 a.m.]

The long dark hours of the morning still held the troops that had marched over from the left to the right of the French position before Maubeuge. The first arrivals had some moments in which to fall at full length on the damp earth in the extremity of their fatigue, but all the while the later contingents came marching in until, before it was yet day but when already the farms about knew that it was morning, and when the cocks had begun to crow in the steadings, all rose and stood to arms. The mist was deepening upon them, a complete silence interpenetrated the damp veil of it, nor through such weather were any lights perceptible upon the heights above which marked the end of the Austrian line.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. In Paris, a little before four in the morning.]

The Queen went down the stone steps of the passage: she entered regally into the cell made ready. She called without interval for pen and paper, and she sat down to write. She felt, after the transition from the populous Court to the silence of those walls, an energy that was not natural and that could not endure, but that served her for an inspiration. She had tasted but a bowl of soup since the morning—nay, since the evening before, thirty hours—soon she must fail. Therefore she wrote quickly while her mood was still upon her.

She sat and wrote to her dead husband’s sister the letter which, alone of all her acts, lends something permanently noble to her name. It is a run of words exalted, dignified, and yet tremendous, nor does any quality about that fourfold sheet of writing, yellow with years, more astound the reader than the quality of revelation: for here something strong and level in her soul, something hitherto quite undiscovered, the deepest part of all, stands and shines. The sheet is blurred—perhaps with tears: we do not know whether ever it was signed or ended; but before the morning came she laid herself upon her bed in her poor black dress, her head was raised somewhat upon her right hand, and so lying she began very bitterly to weep.

The priest of St. Landry, the parish church of the prison, entered to minister to her: she spoke just such few words to him as might assure her that he had sworn the civic oath and was not in communion. When she knew this she would not hear him. But he heard her murmuring against the bitter cold, and bade her put a pillow upon her feet. She did so and was again silent.

The hours wore on, the scent of newly-lighted fires came from the prison yard and the noise of men awakening. The dripping of the damp weather sounded less in the increase of movement, and on the pavement of the quays without began the tramp of marching and the chink of arms; from further off came the rumble of the drums: 30,000 were assembling to line her Way. The two candles showed paler in the wretched room. It was dawn.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. Before Maubeuge, half-past six in the morning.]

The 16th of October broke upon the Flemish hills: the men who had endured that night-march along the front of the battlefield, the men who had received them among the positions of the extreme right, still drooped under the growing light and were invigorated by no sun. The mist of the evening and of the night from dripping and thin had grown dense and whitened with the morning, so that to every soldier a new despair and a new bewilderment were added from the very air, and the blind fog seemed to make yet more obscure the obscure designs of their commanders. The day of their unnatural vigil had dawned, and yet there came no orders nor any stirring of men. Before them slow schistous slopes went upwards and disappeared into the impenetrable weather which hid clogged ploughland and drenched brushwood of the rounded hill; hollow lanes led up through such a land to the summit of the little rise and the hamlet of WATTIGNIES; this most humble and least of villages was waiting its turn for glory.

The downward slope which formed the eastern end of the Austrian line, the low rounded slope whose apex was the spire of the village, was but slightly defended, for it was but the extreme of a position, and who could imagine then—or who _now_—that march through the sleepless night, or that men so worn should yet be ready for new action with the morning? No reinforcement, Coburg knew, could come from behind that army: and how should he dream that Carnot had found the power to feed the fortunes of the French from their own vitals and to drag these shambling 7000, wrenched from West to East during the darkness: or how, if such a thing had been done, could any man believe that, such a torture suffered, the 7000 could still charge?

Yet, had Coburg known the desperate attempt he would have met it, he would have covered that ultimate flank of his long ridge and reinforced it from his large reserve. But the deep mist and the dead silence harshly enforced during the night-march had hidden all the game, and in front of Wattignies, holding that round of sloping fields and the low semicircular end of the ridge before the village, there were but 3000; the infantry of Klebek, of Hohenlohe, and of Stern; for their cavalry they had behind them and alongside of the village farms a few dragoons; certain Croatian battalions stood in a second line. These in that morning, expecting nothing but perhaps the few troops as they had met easily the day before, waited under the mist in formation and heard no sound. The morning broadened; the white vapour seemed lighter all around, but no voices could be heard, nor did there come up through its curtain any rumble of limber from the roads below.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. In Paris, about seven in the morning.]

As the Queen so lay disconsolate and weeping bitterly, stretched in her black gown upon the wretched bed and supporting her head upon her hand, there came in the humble girl who had served her faithfully and who was now almost distraught for what was to come. This child said:—

“You have not eaten all these hours.... What will you take now that it is morning?”

The Queen answered, still crying: “My child, I need nothing more: all is over now.” But the girl added: “Madam, I have kept warm upon the hob some soup and vermicelli. Let me bring it you.” The Queen, weeping yet more, assented.

She sat up a moment (but feebly—her mortal fatigue had come upon her—her loss of blood increased and was continued), she took one spoonful and another; soon she laid the nourishment aside, and the morning drew on to her death.

She must change for her last exit. So much did the Revolution fear to be cheated of its defiance to the Kings that the warders had orders not to lose sight of her for one moment: but she would change. She would go in white to her end.

The girl who had served her screened her a little, and in the space between the bed and the wall she crouched and put on fresh linen, and in place of her faded black a loose white muslin gown. Her widow’s head-dress also, in which she had stood proudly before her Judges, she stripped of its weeds, and kept her hair covered by no more than the linen cap.

Her Judges came in and read to her her sentence.

The executioner, awkward and tall, came in. He must bind her hands. “Why must you bind my hands? The King’s hands were not bound.” Yet were her hands bound and the end of the rope left loose that her gaoler might hold it: but she perhaps herself, before they bound her, cut off the poor locks of her hair.

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. In Paris, at half-past ten in the morning.]

They led her out past the door of the prison: she was “delivered” and signed for; on the steps before the archway she went up into the cart, hearing the crowd howling beyond the great iron gates of the Law Courts, and seeing seated beside her that forsworn priest to whom she would not turn.... Nor were these the last humiliations: but I will not write them here.

Up and down the passages of the prison a little dog whom she had cherished in her loneliness ran whining and disconsolate.

The cart went lumbering on, past the Quay, over the bridge under the murky drizzle. The windows beyond the river were full of heads and faces; the edges of the quays were black with the crowd. The river Seine ran swollen with the rains; its tide and rolling made in such weather no mark upon the water-walls of stone. The cart went lumbering on over the rough wet paving of the northern bank. It turned into the Rue St. Honoré, where the narrow depth was full of noise. The long line of troops stood erect and close upon either side. The dense crowd still roared behind them: their prey sat upon the plank, diminished, as erect as the constraint of her bonds and her failing strength would allow. Her lips, for all their droop of agony, were still proud; her vesture was new; her delicate high shoes had been chosen with care for that journey—but her face might have satisfied them all. The painted red upon her cheeks was dreadful against her utter paleness: from beneath the linen of her cap a few whitened wisps of hair hung dank upon her hollowed temples: a Victim. Her eyes were sunken, and of these one dully watched her foes, one had lost its function in the damp half-darkness of the cells: it turned blank and blind upon the rabble that still followed the walking jolt of the two cart-horses and the broad wheels. At the head of those so following, an actor-fellow pranced upon a horse, thrusting at her by way of index a sword, and shouting to the people that they held the tigress here, the Austrian. In the midst of those so following, an American eager to see elbowed his way and would not lose his vantage. From the windows of the narrow gulf a continued noise of wonder, of jeers, and of imprecations reached her. She still sat motionless and without speech: the executioner standing behind her holding the loose end of the cord, the forsworn priest sitting on the plank beside her but hearing no words of hers.

It is said that as the tumbril passed certain masts whence limp tricolour pendants hung she glanced at them and murmured a word; it is to be believed that, a few yards further, at the turn into the Rue Royale, she gave way at the new sight of the Machine set up for her before the palace gardens.

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. In Paris, at a quarter past twelve, noon.]

This is known, that she went up the steps of the scaffold at liberty and stood for a bare moment seen by the great gathering in the square, a figure against the trees of what had been her gardens and the place where her child had played. It was but a moment, she was bound and thrown, and the steel fell.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. Before Maubeuge, about eleven in the morning.]

On the low mud and slope of Wattignies the mist began to wreathe and thin as the hours approached high noon. Through gaps of it the three Austrian regiments could see trees now and then in the mid-distance, showing huge, and in a moment covered again by new whorls of vapour. But still there was no sound. In front of them towards Dimont, to their left round the corner of the slope in the valley of Glarges, with every lift of vapour the landscape became apparent, when suddenly, as the mist finally lifted, the wide plain showed below them rolling southwards, a vast space of wind and air, and at the same moment they heard first bugles, then the shouts of command, and lastly the rising of the Marseillaise: Gaul was upon them.

The sleepless men had been launched at last, the hollow lanes were full of them swarming upwards: the fields were ribbed with their open lines, and as they charged they sang.

Immortal song! The pen has no power over colour or over music, but though I cannot paint their lively fury or make heard their notes of triumph, yet I have heard them singing: I know the place, and I have seen their faces as they cleared the last hedges of the rise and struck the 3000 upon every side.

These stood, wavered, fell back to re-form: then they saw new masses of the Republicans roaring up from Glarges behind their flank, broke and were scattered by the storm. The few heavy guns of the Austrians there emplaced were trained too late to check the onrush. The little pieces of the climbing and the surging men were dragged by laniards, unmasked behind gaps in the hurrying advance, crashed grape and were covered again for a moment by the living cover of the charge. The green at the hilltop was held, the poor yards and byres of Wattignies were scoured and thundered through, and Carnot, his hat upon his sword, and Duquesnoy his face half blood, and all the host gloried to find before them in their halting mid-day sweat when the great thrust was over, the level fields of the summit, the Austrian line turned, and an open way between them and Maubeuge.

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. Before Maubeuge, just past noon.]

Two charges disputed their certain victory. First the Hungarian cavalry galloped and swerved and broke against the dense and ever denser bodies that still swarmed up three ways at once and converged upon the crested edge of the upland plain; then the Royal Bourbon, emigrants, nobles, swept upon the French, heads down, ready to spend themselves largely into death. They streamed with the huge white flag of the old Monarchy above them, and on it the faint silver lilies, and from either rank the cries that were shouted in defiance were of the same tongue which since Christendom began has so perpetually been heard along all the battle fronts of Christendom.

* * * * *

These also failed: a symbol in name and in flag and in valour of that great, once good, and very ancient thing which God now disapproved.

The strong line of Coburg was turned. It was turned and must roll back upon itself. Its strict discipline preserved it, as did the loose order of the Republican advance and the maddened fatigue of the young men who had just conquered: for these could work a miracle but not yet achieve a plan. The enemy fell back in order, sombre, massed and regular, unharassed, towards the Sambre. The straggling French soldiery, wondering that the fighting had ceased (but wisely judged incapable of pursuit), possessed the main road unhindered; next day they drank with their comrades in Maubeuge.

In this way was accomplished what a principal critic of the art of war[45] has called “The chief feat of arms of the Republic.”

Footnote 45:

Napoleon Buonaparte.

It was somewhat past noon.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Oct. 16, 1793. In Paris, just past noon.]

Upon that scaffold before the gardens which had been the gardens of her home and in which her child had played, the Executioner showed at deliberation and great length, this way and that on every side, the Queen’s head to the people.

PREFACE TO APPENDICES

The practice of loading every page of a modern history with references to authority is charlatan. Such footnotes (as was lamentably evident, for instance, in Anatole France’s recent work upon Joan of Arc) are usually copied from earlier authorities, and are, for the greater part, added without any conscientious reference to the original. Moreover, in dealing with a subject which has been as thoroughly written out by innumerable scholars as has the life of Marie Antoinette, there are very few new pieces of evidence which would make reference excusable.

With this in mind, I have determined to omit any note of the kind.

I had indeed in the original MS. a full series of notes rectifying the more glaring errors of the Cambridge History, but I was so continually discovering new ones that the task outran me, and I further remembered that the reader of a biography of Marie Antoinette would have but little interest in the misfortunes of official academic history. These also, therefore, with some reluctance I deleted from this book, reserving them for a special article upon the subject. All that could be challenged in the book in the way of statement of fact seems to me included in the Appendices that follow, and I am convinced that it is far preferable to leave the pages free to the reader, even at the expense of having perhaps to defend myself later against the criticism of certain points.

APPENDIX A

_THE OPERATION ON LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH OF FRANCE_

THE somewhat lengthy attempt to determine the exact date which changed the course of Louis XVI.’s life, to which I have been compelled in the text, would have been unnecessary had the document which proves both the operation itself and the moment of it been published.

It is certain that Maria Theresa knew in the last year of the old King’s reign the nature of the trouble.[46]

Footnote 46:

MARIA THERESA to MERCY, _3rd January 1774_.—“Je ne compte presque plus que sur l’entremise de l’empereur, qui à son arrivée à Versailles, trouvera peut-être le moyen.”

Louis XVI.’s hesitation in the matter endured through the month immediately succeeding his accession; though in the December[47] of that year he seems to have come very near to a decision. It is certain that the Emperor was to act with authority in the matter; and it is probable that Louis XVI.’s long and disastrous hesitation was in part occasioned by his brother-in-law’s delay and postponement of his voyage to Versailles.

Footnote 47:

MARIE ANTOINETTE to MARIA THERESA, _17th December 1774_.—“Le roi a eu il y a huit jours une grande conversation avec mon médecin; je suis fort contente de ses dispositions et j’ai bonne espérance de suivre bientôt l’example de ma sœur.”

Mercy was informed thoroughly of the main object of the Emperor’s visit just before it took place,[48] and Maria Theresa at the same time specially emphasised to her Ambassador this capital business which her son had undertaken.[49]

Footnote 48:

MERCY to MARIA THERESA, _18th March 1777_.—“Relativement au séjour que fera ici S.M. l’empereur, et à toutes les circonstances qui pourront en résulter, il ne me reste pas la moindre incertitude sur les hautes intentions de V.M., et ses ordres seront remplis avec tout le scrupule et le soin qu’exige l’importance d’une pareille conjuncture dont il peut résulter tant de différents effets.”

Footnote 49:

MARIA THERESA to MERCY, _31st March 1777_.—“Vous pouvez bien croire que ce point est un des plus importants a éclaircir, s’il y a à espérer de la succession ou point, et vous tâcherez de mettre au clair cela avec l’empereur.”

We know that the operation was performed by the King’s surgeon, Lassone, and the point is to determine, in the absence of direct evidence, the date upon which Lassone operated.

I say “in the absence of direct evidence,” for, though that evidence exists, it is not available. All papers left by Lassone, including the _procès verbal_ of the operation on the King, were ultimately brought into the collection of Feuillet de Conches. This collector has been dead twenty years, and Dr. Des, among others, asked, just after his death, for the production of this all-important document; but it was refused, and I believe it is still refused.

It is a great loss to history. Moreover, one does not see what purpose can be served by such reticence, if, as I believe, it is still maintained.

As it is, we must depend upon a few veiled and discreet allusions in the contemporary correspondence of Mercy, the Queen, and the Empress. The principal of these consist in nine passages, the first of which is as follows:—

“Le 27 je me rendis de grand matin à Versailles, où, après avoir parlé d’affaires avec le comte de Vergennes, j’allai à l’hôtel garni qu’occupait l’empereur. Le premier medécin Lassone avait été pendant une heure chez S.M., et elle était alors dans son cabinet avec l’abbé de Vermond.”

This letter was written on 15th June 1777. Mercy, who had been in very bad health, sends to Maria Theresa his account of the Emperor’s visit. In this letter he mentions, under the date Tuesday, 27th May, a long interview which the Emperor had with Lassone, he himself, Mercy, being present, and also Vermond, the Queen’s former tutor. Later in the day the Emperor spent two hours alone with his brother-in-law, discussing, in Mercy’s phrase, “confidential details.” It was at this moment, presumably, that the Emperor persuaded the King. It will be seen, therefore, that he put off mention of the matter until late in his visit, at the end of the month of May. Maria Theresa, having by that time had opportunity of hearing by word of mouth things that could hardly be written, writes that she is content so far as things have gone, but is waiting to hear about everything from her son on his return.

She also writes to Marie Antoinette on the 29th June 1777, as follows:—

“J’en attends les plus heureuses suites, et même pour votre état de mariage, sur lequel on me laisse espérance: mais on remet le tout au retour,[50] où on pourra me parler.”

Footnote 50:

“The return,” of the Emperor, that is.

It is evident that nothing was done during the Emperor’s actual stay, or in his presence. On the 29th of August, Maria Theresa, having seen her son, is still by no means certain.[51] One must allow a fortnight (more or less) for news to reach her from Versailles. We may be confident, therefore, that whatever was written to her about the middle of the month of August was not yet wholly reassuring, though this may not prove that no operation had taken place; it may only go to show that success was not yet certain.

Footnote 51:

MARIE THERESA to MERCY, _29th August 1777_.—“Je le souhaite à l’égard du roi, mais je n’en suis pas rassurée.”

It is on the 10th of September, in a letter from Marie Antoinette to Maria Theresa, that the first note of confidence on the part of the Queen appears. It was premature, but matters were now certain.[52]

Footnote 52:

“Ce nouveau-né”—she writes of her sister-in-law’s child—“me fait encore plus de plaisir par l’espérance que j’ai d’avoir bientôt le même bonheur.”

We may, therefore, take it for certain that things were settled _not earlier_ than the middle of August, _nor later_ than the end of the first week of September; and it may be predicted that when Lassone’s paper sees the light it will bear a date within those three weeks.

Mercy sees by January[53] that everything is long settled. The Queen knew herself to be with child in the first week in April, and news was sent to her mother on the date which I have given in the text.

Footnote 53:

“Je dois aussi ajouter la remarque très essentielle que la reine continue à se conduire très-bien avec le roi, qui de son côté persiste à vivre maritalement dans le sens le plus exact et le plus réel.”

APPENDIX B

_ON THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE OF DROUET’S RIDE_

THE reader or student acquainted with various records of the French Revolution may be tempted to regard the account of Drouet’s Ride in my text as containing too much detail for accurate history; especially as no historian has hitherto done more than vaguely allude to it. I will therefore in this Appendix show the way in which I found it possible to reproduce every circumstance of Drouet’s movements from the time when he left Ste. Menehould until the time of his arrival at Varennes.

The berline left Ste. Menehould shortly after eight. It had to climb to Germeries Wood[54] on the crest of the forest, four hundred feet in four miles. It could not possibly, therefore, have reached the summit till after nine, and however fast was the run down on to Islettes (just over five miles from Ste. Menehould) that village cannot have been reached before 9.15. From Islettes to Clermont is just four miles, and mostly slightly rising. The best going could not cover the distance in twenty minutes, which puts the earliest possible entry into Clermont at twenty-five or twenty to ten. The change of horses took from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour. Put it at the lowest, and one has for the earliest possible time the berline can have left Clermont that it must have been within ten minutes of ten o’clock.

Footnote 54:

The summit is 860 feet above the sea; the town about 460 feet.

From Clermont to Varennes is nine miles: a straight road, descending slightly on the whole, but not quite flat. Under the best conditions that day the berline had not covered ten miles in the hour; let it gallop at _twelve_ (a pace it was quite incapable of, save in short spells) and Varennes would still be three-quarters of an hour off.

Now Varennes was entered just on a quarter to eleven. The berline cannot therefore have left Clermont later than ten; and cannot have arrived earlier than ten minutes to ten; so this departure of the Royal Family from Clermont for Varennes, of Drouet’s postillions back from Clermont for Ste. Menehould, took place sometime in those ten minutes.

Now Drouet reached Varennes before eleven. He reached it round about by the forest—not by the main road—and he reached it by a gallop through a pitch dark night in dense wood without a moon.[55] The shortest line as the crow flies from the last bend of the road before Clermont to Varennes Bridge is ten miles; any deviation through the wood, even in a straight line, would make it nearly twelve. It is very difficult to cover twelve miles in an hour under such conditions, but even if you allow Drouet that pace he must leave the high road about ten.

Footnote 55:

The sky was overcast.

All this synchronises to within a very few minutes. The postillions leave Clermont to turn back home in the ten minutes before ten; they go fast, for they are riding light; a mile or so up the road they meet their master. It is just here that the forest on the northern side of the ravine touches the modern railway and comes nearest to the road. Drouet takes to the forest certainly not before ten and equally certainly not ten minutes after.

So much for the hour at which he took to the wood.

Now what road did he pursue in the forest? Only one is possible. The forest here covers a high ridge, some three hundred feet above the open plain. Down in the plain, parallel to this ridge and at its base, runs the high road from Clermont to Varennes, with a row of farms and wide fields between it and the edge of the wood. Had Drouet gone anywhere but along the ridge he would have had to cross some twenty streams, to climb and fall over as many ravines (_all of clay_), to flank a dozen clay ponds and marshes, and with all this there was no continuous path. He could not have done it in two hours, let alone one. He was compelled to follow the ridge. It so happens that there runs all along the ridge a green ride called “the High Ride.” It is a Gaulish track of great antiquity, known to the peasantry as “the Roman Way.” It does not come down as far as Clermont; it leaves the forest at the farm and huts of Lochères. To this farm Drouet must have made his way by the lanes and gates of Jacques and Haute Prise—once at Lochères, a hard gallop along the High Ride brought him in six or seven miles to the Crossed Stone (called also the Dead Girl); here another green ride crosses the main ride of the ridge. He took this cross ride to the right hand: it leads down and out of the forest; one comes out of the wood a mile or so from Varennes with the town right below one and what was then a lane (now it is a county road) through the open valley fields. Just before entering the town a detour (by where the tile-works are now) would get him into the Rue de Mont Blainville, and so to the Bridge: a detour serving the double purpose of avoiding possible troops at the entry to the town and of getting ahead of any carriage coming in from Clermont. He cannot but have taken this detour, have noted the waggon by the bridge as he passed it (he later used it to block the bridge), and then have come up the main street from the river.

APPENDIX C

_THE ORDER TO CEASE FIRE_

THE order to cease fire, which forms the frontispiece of this book, and which is the last executive document of the French monarchy, has been misunderstood by not a few critics, and its value thereby lessened.

It is, as I shall presently show, authentic, and therefore of the highest possible interest to every student of history. The traveller will find it to-day in the central glass case of the square Revolutionary Room in the Carnavalet Museum. The body of the writing is not in the hand of Louis himself, but the signature is undoubtedly his. The lines were scribbled in haste by some one attendant upon the King, signed by him, and sent to the palace.

Now no event of such importance and so recent has been more variously described by eye-witnesses than the fall of the palace in 1792; and the particular incident of the order to cease fire suffers, like every other detail of those famous hours, from a plethora, and therefore a conflict, of evidence.

It may be remarked in passing, and by way of digression, that such difficulty cannot but attach to any episode of hard fighting, on account of the mental condition which that exercise produces. There is exactly the same trouble, for instance, in determining with exactitude the all-important moment of the evening in which the Guard failed at Waterloo.

We may confidently say, however, that two separate messages were sent to the palace. The first was a verbal message to cease fire, which reached Hervilly, who was directing the whole operation. Hervilly, as we know, refused to obey, having the action well in hand, and being yet confident of success. Either after the southern end of the Tuileries had been forced by the populace (who, as we now know, turned the flank of the defence by fighting their way through from the Long Gallery), or while that capital incident was in progress, Durler, a captain of the Swiss Guards, commanding no more than a company, but probably the company which had the best chance of retreating, asked for orders. It is difficult to believe that he would have done so unless the position was already desperate. The order which reached him was a repetition of the former one, but it was written, not verbal, and it is this second written order the facsimile of which forms the frontispiece to this volume. Durler did not see it written. He had gone in person to learn what he should do, but he was back again with his men before the note was handed to him. He was a perfectly honest and trustworthy man, and his testimony remains. It is evident from this testimony that, by the time the note came, all was over.

As to the pedigree of the document:—

Durler rose to the rank of general before his death. He naturally regarded this piece of historic writing as among the most precious of his possessions, and left it to his family, who were resident in Lucerne. Chateaubriand, visiting Lucerne on the 15th of May 1832, saw it in that town. From General Durler’s daughter and heiress it descended to his grandchildren, Schimacher by name, and was in the early eighties the property of M. Felix Schimacher of Lucerne, whose agent in Paris was a banker, Mr. de Trooz.

M. Cousin, the curator of the Municipal Museum of Paris (the Carnavalet), hearing of it, approached Mr. de Trooz, and offered a large sum on behalf of the city. The offer was accepted. The pedigree of the document was drawn up by M. Dagobert Schimacher, lawyer in Lucerne, and the whole despatched to Paris, where the purchase was completed on the 27th July 1886, and the document deposited in the Museum, where it now lies.

APPENDIX D

_ON THE LOGE OF THE “LOGOTACHYGRAPHE”_

THE Manège was pulled down after the consular decree of year XI., which originated the Rue de Rivoli; the historical reconstruction of its arrangements on the 10th of August 1792 is the more difficult from the fact that the only accurate plan of it which has come down to us[56] dates from a period _earlier_ than December 1791, in which month (on the 27th) the order was given to change nearly the whole of its dispositions. The box of the _Logographe_ can be fixed in this plan (though not in the new place it occupied after the 5th of January 1792),[57] but not that of the _Logotachygraphe_.

Footnote 56:

In the _Histoire des Edifices_, &c., by Paris.

Footnote 57:

The work was finished by the 26th of January 1792.

We know[58] that the first was near the President’s Chair, and this was on the south side of the Manège, in the middle. It was in this box that the Queen had appeared when her husband had accepted the Constitution on the return from Varennes; and it was in this box that the Royal Family were supposed, until lately, to have stayed in the three days after the fall of the palace.

Footnote 58:

By the 7th clause of the order cited.

There were many such grated boxes for reporters up and down the Hall: the proximity of the _Logographe’s_ to the Chair being due to the desire for accurate verbatim reports to be recorded from the best acoustic position of the Hall.

Our establishment of the _Logographe’s_ box is only of value to the history of the 10th of August because (though a confusion was till recently made between the two) the box in which the Royal Family were put, that of the _Logotachygraphe_, a journal not yet published, but in preparation, and one which had already obtained leave to have its reporting place in the Hall, must have been near by. Its exact situation we cannot determine, but it was certainly not far from the Chair on the south wall, and presumably in the eastern half of it.

APPENDIX E

_UPON THE “LAST PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN” BY KUCHARSKI_

THREE “last” portraits of Marie Antoinette, each very similar to the two others, though not replicas, are known to exist: each is ascribed to the painter Kucharski, who appears for a moment at the Queen’s trial, and who is known to have painted her at Court.

These portraits are, one in Arenburg Gallery at Brussels, another in the Carnavalet, and the third in the new Revolutionary Room on the third floor at Versailles. This last is the one which is reproduced here, because M. de Nolhac, by far the best authority, has assured me of its authenticity. On the other hand, it must be mentioned that the Belgian one was vouched for by Auguste d’Arenberg[59] who bought it in 1805, and who quotes the testimony of the painter[60] himself, who was then alive.

Footnote 59:

See “Notes sur quelques Portraits de la Galerie d’Arenberg,” in the _Annales de l’Académie Royale d’Archéologie de Belgique_, 4th series, vol. x. 1897.

Footnote 60:

On this painter there exists a monograph by Mycielski (Paris, 1894), and an article published in the December number, 1905, of the _Revue d’ Art, Ancien et Moderne_.

He appears to have affirmed that he saw the Queen in the Temple when he was on guard, took the sketch, noting the details of dress, &c., and completing the work at home.

APPENDIX F

_ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE QUEEN’S LAST LETTER_

THE few doubts that some have put forward against the authenticity of this famous document will, unless history abandons its modern vices, increase with time, for it is a document exactly suited to the type of minute, internal, literal, and documentary criticism by which tradition is, to-day, commonly assailed. It will be pointed out that the psychology of this letter differs altogether from that of the mass of Marie Antoinette’s little scribbled notes, and equally from her serious political drafts and despatches. Critics will very probably be found to dispute the possibility of such a woman at such a time producing such a document. The style fits ill with what she was in Court just before it purports to have been written, and also with what she was on her way to the scaffold just after. Most important of all, perhaps, the sentences are composed in a manner quite different from that of any other letter of hers we possess; they have a rhythm and a composition in them: the very opening words are in a manner wholly more exalted and more rhetorical than ever was her own.

It will be further and especially pointed out that the moment when it was discovered was the very moment for forgery, and this point is of such importance to the discussion that I must elaborate it.

By nightfall of June 18, 1815, the experiment of founding democracy in Europe was imagined to be at an end: Napoleon was definitely defeated. On the 7th of July the first forces of the Allies entered Paris, and on the 20th of November was signed the second Treaty of Paris, whereby the reinstatement of the old régime in France was accomplished at a price to the nation of 700,000,000 francs and of all its conquests. All the power of a highly centralised Government was now in the hands of Louis XVIII., and it was in the highest degree profitable to prove oneself a friend to what had but a few months before seemed a lost cause. Document after document appeared professing a special knowledge of the woes of the Royal Family, petition after petition was presented in which the petitioners (nearly always in the same conventional and hagiographical style) spoke of the Royal “martyrs” in the Temple and in the Conciergerie.

In the light of such a character attaching to this particular moment, note the following sequence of dates in connection with the production of the document we are discussing.

Not two months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris the French Chamber voted the Law of Amnesty. The seventh clause of this Act banished the regicides who had sat in the Convention. Among these was a certain Courtois, a man now over seventy years of age, who had bought a large country house and estate near the frontier. Note, further, that Courtois had started as a small bootmaker and was one of the very few politicians of the Revolution who had followed our modern practice of making money out of politics. His honesty, therefore, was doubtful: a thing which we cannot say of the enthusiasts of the time. Of _those_ we can say that their imaginations or their passions may warp their evidence, but in the case of Courtois we know that he was a professional politician of the modern type, and would do a dishonest thing for money.

Now this Courtois had been one of a Commission named by the Convention to examine Robespierre’s papers after the fall of Robespierre on the 28th of July 1794. He was what the French call the Reporter of the Commission—that is, the director of it—and it was called the “Courtois Commission.” The Commission published their report of what they had found in Robespierre’s house. It was a report two volumes in length for which Courtois was responsible, and of which he was practically the author.

This minute and voluminous report _made no mention of the Queen’s letter_. Not a word is heard of it during all those twenty-two years until the aforesaid Bill of Amnesty is before the French Parliament of the Restoration and the regicides, including old Courtois, passing his last days on his comfortable estate, are to suffer exile. Then for the first time the Queen’s letter appears. On the 25th of January 1816 Courtois writes to a prominent lawyer, an acquaintance of his wife’s, a Royalist, and in touch with the Court, telling him that he had kept back ten pieces among the mass of things found in Robespierre’s house, three of them trinkets, a lock of hair, &c., one or two letters of no importance—and the capital point of all, this letter of Marie Antoinette’s to her sister-in-law. He offers to exchange these against a special amnesty to himself, or at least of a year’s delay before he is exiled, in order, presumably, to allow him to realise his fortune.

This is not all: the letter was not written until Courtois’ wife was dead; and it was written on the very day of her death and the moment after it—the moment, that is, after the death of the only person who would presumably know—if he allowed any one to know—whether he had or had not carefully concealed these documents for so many years.

The Government of Louis XVIII. offered money for the letter, and, having so lulled the suspicions of Courtois, sent one of its officials without warning into his house and seized his effects. Some days afterwards the letter (which no one had yet seen or heard of) is produced by Royal order and shown to Madame d’Angoulême (who is said to have fainted when she saw it), and ordered to be read from every pulpit during Mass on the 16th of October of every year; a vast edition of it is brought out in facsimile and distributed broadcast, and the letter itself is enshrined among the public exhibits at the Archives.

A lengthy analysis of the sort just concluded is necessary to make the reader understand how and why a strong attack upon the authenticity of the letter will sooner or later certainly be made. I owe it to my readers to say why the apparently strong presumption against this letter does not in my opinion hold.

First let me recapitulate what is to be said against it:—

(1) There is no contemporary trace of it.[61]

Footnote 61:

The woman Bault, who was wardress of the Conciergerie, says that her husband told her of such a letter, but her evidence is given after Louis XVIII. had published it, and for all those twenty-two years she had said nothing about it. Moreover she talked of its discovery with the usual clap-trap phrases of “The Omnipotence of Heaven showing its ineffable goodness by restoring us this monument in its most admirable way, &c.” And _the only contemporary account_, while it does mention the lock of hair which the Queen desired given to a friend, says nothing of the letter.

(2) It appears at a moment when forged documents of that sort were of the highest value both to a despotic Government and to the vendors or producers of them.

(3) That moment is no less than _twenty-two years_ posterior to the supposed writing of the letter, and, during all those twenty-two years, of the many who should have seen it, of the _three_ public men (all enemies) through whose hands it must have passed, no one has heard of its existence nor mentioned it in a private correspondence, nor apparently so much as spoken of it in a conversation to a friend.

(4) It is first heard of from a man who would have every interest in forging it and who is known to have been very unscrupulous in political dealings for money.

(5) He makes his offer on the very day when the last witness there could be against him dies.

(6) The document, when it does appear, appears without any pedigree, or chain of witnesses to vouch for it, nor even any tradition. It is vouched for only by the people who had most interest in creating such a relic and is forced upon the public with every apparatus at the command of a despotic Government.

(7) Most important of all, the letter is written in a high and affecting style wholly different from all that we know of Marie Antoinette’s writing, and quite inconsistent with her demeanour at the moment, consonant only with the sanctity which it was at that moment desired to give to the Royal Family.

Nevertheless I believe the document to be without the slightest doubt authentic, and I will give my reasons for this certitude:—

(1) To forge a letter of Marie Antoinette’s is peculiarly difficult. There have been many such attempts. They have been discovered with an ease familiar to all students of her life.

This difficulty lies in the great irregularity of her method of writing, coupled with the exact persistence of certain types of letter. She never in her life could write a line straight across a page. She never made two “d’s” exactly the same, and yet you never can mistake one of her “d’s.” She never crossed a “t” quite in the same manner twice, and yet you can always tell her way of crossing it. The absence of capitals after a full stop is a minor point but a considerable one. She always brought the lower loop of the “b” up to the up stroke, so that it looks like an “f”; she always separated her “l’s” from the succeeding letter.

Let the reader compare the document of which I am speaking, reproduced in facsimile opposite page 395, and her letter of the 3rd of September 1791 to Joseph II. (opposite page 297), and he will see what I mean. The first is reproduced on a four-fifths scale, the second in facsimile, but the points I make can easily be followed upon them. Note the first “d” in the first line of the letter written in prison, the second “d” and the third “d” all in the same line. Next look down to the seventh line and note the “d” in “tendre,” and see how the first three “d’s” though irregular are of the same type, and how the fourth, though much less hooked, is obviously written by the same hand. Look down two lines lower to the “d” in “plaidoyer”; it has a complete hook and is quite different from the other letters, and three lines lower, in the word “deux,” the hook has a sharp angle apparent nowhere else on the page. Now if you turn to the “d’s” in her letter to her brother of the 3rd of September 1791, you will find exactly the same characteristics. Not one “d” like another, yet all obviously from the same hand; the “d” in the second line with a full hook to it, the two “d’s” in the twelfth line much vaguer.

So with the “t’s,” they are crossed in every kind of way with a short straight line, a long curved one, a little jab followed by a straight, now with a slope downward, now with a slope upward, but all evidently from the same hand, and their very variety makes it impossible for them to be a forgery. The “l’s,” written separately from the letter following each, are obvious everywhere, so is that irregularity of line of which I have spoken. Let the reader look at the third line of the letter of the 3rd of September 1791 (opposite page 297) and at the seventh line of the letter written in prison, and ask himself whether it would have been possible to copy such native irregularity.

The identity of handwriting is apparent even from these two documents. It is absolutely convincing to any one who has seen much of her penmanship.

(2) To the faults in grammar and in spelling I should pay little attention—those things are easily copied; but it is worth remarking that on the third line of the letter written in prison she spells the infinitive of “montrer” without the final “r” as though it were a participle, while in the letter written to her brother in 1791 she makes no such error. She puts an “e” in “Jouis,” and so forth. All these discrepancies are a proof of the authenticity of the letter. She spelt at random, and her grammar was at random, though she got a little more accurate as she grew older. It would, on the contrary, be an argument _against_ the authenticity of the letter if particular mistakes, discovered in a particular document of hers, were repeated in this last letter from the Conciergerie.

(3) The letter was immediately exposed to public view; the paper was grown yellow, the writing was apparently old, the ink in places faded, the creases deep and worn. Now all these accidental features could no doubt be reproduced by a modern forger with the advantage of modern methods, modern mechanical appliances, modern chemical science and photography. They could not have been achieved by a forger of 1816.

It seems to me, therefore, a document absolutely unassailable. The arguments against it are of the same sort which modern scepticism perpetually brings against every form of historical evidence that does not fit in with some favourite modern theory. I must believe the evidence of my senses, and I am compelled to admit that a woman, every expression of whose soul was different from this, and whose whole demeanour before and after writing the letter betrayed a mental condition quite inconsistent with the writing of it, was granted for perhaps an hour (in spite of a full day’s fast, the fear of imminent death and the breakdown of her health and of all her power), an exaltation sufficient to produce this wonderful piece of prose, and a steadfast control of language and a discovery of language miraculously exceptional to her character and experience.

No other conclusion is possible to a student unless, like any Don, he prefers a sceptical hypothesis to the testimony of his eyes and the judgment of his common sense.

APPENDIX G

THE cautious student will attach considerable importance to the account given by Dumas, and to the account given by the Abbé Gabriel, especially to the former, in his _La Route de Varennes_. Dumas was a novelist. His contribution to history will therefore seem suspect, but it must be remembered that he had the whole story from Choiseul himself. The motives to which he ascribes Choiseul’s departure are substantially those given in the text; but he particularly adds that the number of peasants crowding round the Hussars greatly outnumbered those soldiers; that the local villages were rising, and that a special reason for their anxiety was discoverable in the fact that the recently emancipated copyholders of a local noblewoman were on that particular day in dread of distraint upon their goods at the hands of a military force.

INDEX

Adelaide, Madame, the eldest of Louis XV.’s daughters, her influence on Marie Antoinette, 61; her influence in making Maurepas Chief Minister, 82, 83; catches small-pox in nursing her father, 83

Aire, the river of Varennes, tactical advantages of, to Nationalists, 279, 282

Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 8

Amand, Jacques, peasant child adopted by Marie Antoinette, 78; his death as a soldier at Jemappes, 343

America, United States of. _See also_ United States

—— tea tax imposed in Boston coincidently with Louis XV.’s death, 72; British colonies in, origin of their revolt, 100; arrival of delegates to France from, 100; British colonies in, character of population forbids extreme policy of war in, 102; rebellion of colonies in, England’s certain policy towards, 106-7; failure of Burgoyne’s campaign in, 108-12; rebellion of colonies in, strategical position at time of Burgoyne’s march, 108-10

Anne, Fort, Burgoyne captures, 111

“Antoinette,” first use of this French form of the Queen’s name, 30

Antwerp, commerce of, dependent on opening of the Scheldt, 145-46

Archbishop’s Palace. _See_ Archeveché

Archeveché, National Assembly installed in, on coming to Paris in Days of October, 232

Argonne, hills of, their position on the eastern road, 270; Royal carriage begins ascent of, in flight to Varennes, 276; Drouet’s ride through forest of, 277-78; forced by the invaders in 1792, 339

Army, British, its excellence in 1776, 101

Army, French, deplorable condition of, in 1792, 296

Army of the East, most reliable force for Crown in 1789, 216; pointed out by Mirabeau as support of the Crown, 246

Artois, Comte d’, Louis XVI.’s youngest brother, his admiration of Marie Antoinette, 65; his “shocking familiarity” with the Queen in early days of her marriage, 92; scandal of Queen’s association with, 123; receives Queen in his palace at the Temple, 164; her superstition, 164; his appearance at the Royal Session, 206; emigration after fall of Bastille, 213

Assignats, creation of, 238

Auctoritas, “_Sine auctoritate nulla vita_,” Gallic formula, 78

Austria, extreme peril of, on partition of Poland, 61-63

—— foreign policy of, Joseph II. arrives at Versailles to influence Queen in favour of, 103

Authority, “without it no life,” 78

“Autrichienne,” nickname given Marie Antoinette by Mesdames, 64

Bailly, his role on 20th June 1789, 206; first Mayor of Paris, 212

Ball, Court, on Marie Antoinette’s marriage, 53; masked, an especial diversion of Marie Antoinette as Dauphine, 65; Fersen first meets her at one, 66; of 21st January 1778, independence of United States recognised at, 114-15; on Shrove Tuesday, at the Opera, 1779, Queen’s undignified adventure in connection with, 121; the last held in Versailles, winter of 1786, 178

Bankruptcy of the Guémenées disastrous to the Queen, 144; part of Queen’s plan for defeat of States-General, 210

Barentin, Keeper of the Seals announces fatal decision as to vote by orders at opening of States-General, 201; advises shutting of doors against Tiers État, 204; watches the Oath in the Tennis Court, 205; gives the seated leave to be seated, 207

Barnave, nominated to bring King back to Paris, 285; captured by the Queen on return from Varennes, 288-89

Barry, Madame Du. _See_ Du Barry

Bastille, Marie Antoinette talks wildly of sending Turgot to, 98; Cardinal Rohan at, 176; captured, news of in Versailles, 211-12

Batz, his plan for helping the Queen to escape, 354

Bavaria, Joseph II. first covets, 105; diplomatic affair of, 116-18; Marie Antoinette’s interference in, 116, 117; death of Elector of, 116; Prussia supports the heir of, against Austria, 117; Joseph II.’s policy in, 117; French money paid to Austria on account of, 118

Bayon and Romeuf, their ride in pursuit of the King to Varennes, 283, 284

Beauharnais, in the Chair of the Assembly when news of the King’s arrest at Varennes is brought, 285

Beaumarchais, de, title purchased by Caron, 102; assumes trading alias of Roderigo Hortalez, 102; his birth and character, 135, 136; his _Mariage de Figaro_ (_see_ Figaro), reads his play in private in Princesse de Lamballe’s rooms, 136

Bed of Justice, Louis XVI.’s first recourse to, in registering Turgot’s decrees, 97, 98; last, held to coerce the Parlement under influence of the Queen, 189

Bells, of Paris, sound the attack on the palace, 319

Bernis, Cardinal de, negotiates the diplomatic revolution, 22

Berthier, murder of, after fall of Bastille, 213

Bodyguard. _See_ Garde au Corps

Boehmer and Bassange, jewellers and partners, owners of the Diamond Necklace, 159; show it to Mme. de La Motte, 162; appeal to the Queen for payment, 165; draw up a report, 167

Bondy, first post-house on the Eastern road, Fersen leaves Royal Family at, 262-63

Boston, British man-of-war arrives in harbour of, to impose tea tax, at same hour as Louis XV.’s death, 72; English fleet fails to blockade French fleet in harbour of, 121

Bouillé, in command of Army of the East in ’89, 216; in command of Army of the East, pointed out by Mirabeau as the support of the Crown, 246; his cavalry arrive at Varennes just too late to save the King, 282-83

Bouillon, Duke of, officially announces accession of Louis XVI., 72

Brandweiss, Countess of, first governess of Marie Antoinette and her sister Caroline, 24

Brandywine, Washington’s defeat on, 110

Breteuil, orders the arrest of Cardinal de Rohan, 159

Brienne. _See_ Loménie

Broglie, in “Ministry of Resistance,” to lead army for coercion of Paris, 210

Brunier, family doctor of the Queen, admitted to the Temple, 348

Brunswick, breaks camp at end of July 1792 and marches on Paris, 315

Burgoyne’s, his campaign and surrender, 108-12

Burke, his lack of judgment on the Queen, 94, 95

Busne, officer guarding the Queen during her trial, 385

Byron, fails to blockade d’Estaing in Boston harbour, 121

Cagliostro, his influence over Cardinal de Rohan, 156

Calonne, his appointment and character, 149, 150; his loans 151; designs the harbour of Cherbourg, 177; summons the Notables, 178; failure of his experiment of the assembly of the Notables, 180; his fall, April 1787, due to Marie Antoinette, 187

Cambrai, garrison of, cut to pieces, 371

Campaign of American Rebellion, Burgoyne’s failure, 108-12; surrender of Cornwallis, 127-28

Carnot, joins the Committee of Public Safety, 368; appears before Maubeuge with the army, 374; his plan in Avesnes before the battle of Wattignies, 375; prepares for the attack, 382; his first reconnaissance before the battle of Wattignies, Oct. 14, 383; orders the charge upon Dourlers, 386; brings troops over from left of French position to the right, before Wattignies, 392, 394; leads the charge at Wattignies, 400

Caroline, daughter of Maria Theresa, later Queen of Naples, educated with Marie Antoinette, 24

Caron. _See_ Beaumarchais

Catholicism, decay of, in France before Revolution, 250

Cats, Louis XVI.’s aversion to, 76

Cease fire, order to, signed by Louis XVI., 328

Cell, Queen’s first, in the Conciergerie, 365, 366

Chaintry, posting station of, Royal Family recognised at, in flight to Varennes, 268

Chalons, King recognised at, in flight to Varennes, 269; historical character of neighbourhood of, 270

Champ de Mars, massacre of, 301

Champlain, Lake, strategical value of, in Burgoyne’s campaign, 109

Chancel, hesitates to make a sortie from Maubeuge, 383

Chartres, Duc de, later Duke of Orleans, first meeting with Marie Antoinette, 40; dances with Marie Antoinette at her first ball, 53; his theatrical absence from the Court on visit of Maximilian, 91

Chaumont, his house and park in Passy, the refuge of American delegates, 100

Chauveau-Lagarde, named to defend the Queen, 374

Chauvelin, his death at Louis XV.’s card-table, 67

Cherbourg, harbour of, visited by Louis XVI., 177, 178

Child, early craving of Marie Antoinette for a, 77; she adopts a peasant, 77, 78; last of Marie Antoinette, a girl, birth of, 178; death at age of eleven months, 188

Childbed, first, of Marie Antoinette, 119-20; second birth of an heir, 129; third, 163; fourth, 178

Choiseul, principal Minister of Louis XV., Maria Theresa’s reliance upon him before her daughter’s marriage, 26; his fall, 55-58; meets Marie Antoinette on her journey to her marriage, 38; recalled at beginning of Louis XVI.’s reign through influence of Marie Antoinette, but dismissed again, 82

Choiseul, Junior (nephew of former), at the post of Somme-Vesle, 271-272; abandons post of Somme-Vesle, 273, 274

Chorez, Mayor of Chalons, 270

Church, Catholic, in France, attitude of Revolution towards revenues of, 237; constitution of, 238

Churching, first, of Marie Antoinette, 120, 121; second, 135; third, her unpopularity evident in the street, 164

Civil Constitution of the Clergy, disastrous character of, 249-50; Mirabeau’s attitude towards, 251

Civilisation, European (_see_ Europe), threatened by Reformation, 3

Claye, Queen’s waiting-women join Royal Family in flight at, 265

Clergy, summoned to grant taxes before Revolution, refuse, 192; civil constitution of (_see_ Civil Constitution), confiscation of goods of, 237, 238; unpopularity of, 257

Cléry, Louis XVI.’s valet in the Temple, 336; is taken from the Temple, 348

Coburg, determines to besiege Maubeuge, 367

Commons. _See_ Tiers État

Compiègne, place of meeting of Louis XV. with Marie Antoinette, 38-40

Conciergerie, Queen removed to, from Temple, 364

Condé, emigration of, after fall of Bastille, 213; town of, surrender of, 363

Conflans, country-seat of Mercy, 124

Cornwallis enters Yorktown, 126; his campaign and surrender, 127, 128

Coronation, of Louis XVI., 93-95; Queen’s presence at, 94

Council, Marie Antoinette’s first interference with, 83; King’s assiduity in attending, 93; Queen virtually the head of, after January 1787, 179, 187-88; during “Days of October,” Marie Antoinette present at, 225, 226

Crown, quarrel between, and States-General opens, 204; advises Union of Orders, 209

Cubieres brings news of Paris marching on Versailles to Louis XVI., 221

D’Aiguillon, Duc de, chief Minister at end of Louis XV.’s reign after Choiseul’s fall, made by the Du Barry, 55, 58, 59; befriends the Du Barry at the end, 70; his fall, 70; dismissed from Foreign Affairs by Louis XVI., 83; receives grant of public money on dismissal in the modern English fashion, 83; fall of, largely due to Marie Antoinette, 84

D’Angoulême, Duchess of (_see also_ Madame Royale), birth of, 120

Danjou during massacres of September, 338

Dauphin, son of Louis XV., his death in 1765, 26

Dauphin, first, Louis XVI.’s eldest son, birth of, 129; effect of his birth on politics, 130; illness of, 160; dying, watches opening of States-General, 200

Dauphin, second (Duke of Normandy), his birth, 163; during invasion of Tuileries by mob, on 20th June, 306; taken from the Queen, 355-359; evidence extracted from him against the Queen by Hébert, 373

Dead, Day of, November 2, coincidence of Marie Antoinette’s birth with, 21; situation of Marie Antoinette upon, in 1775, 95, 96; in 1789, coincidence of, 235

Deane, delegate of the revolted British colonists in America, received by Louis XVI., 114

D’Epresmenil affirms the revolutionary principles of national government in the Parlement, 191

D’Estaing sails from Toulon to attack the English fleet in 1778, 115; escapes from Byron’s blockade in Boston harbour, 121; appears at Queen’s Trial, 387

D’Hervilly refuses to cease fire, 328

Diamond Necklace, La Motte first introduced to Cardinal Rohan, 127; the Cardinal de Rohan begins his advances to the Queen (early 1782), she avoids him, 138; Mme. de La Motte present at Court in 1782, 138, 139; Cardinal de Rohan, bribing a porter, is present at a fête at Trianon, 141, 142; Mme. de La Motte presents petition to the Queen, 147; he sees Mme. de La Motte in his country house in Alsace in 1783, 149; in his palace in Paris in March 1784 she tells him she is now an intimate friend of the Queen’s, 151-52;

he receives from La Motte letters which he believes to be written by the Queen, 155; is further encouraged by Cagliostro, and writes letters to the Queen which he gives to La Motte, 156; Mme. de La Motte’s husband hires the girl d’Oliva to act the part of the Queen, 157; supposed meeting of Cardinal de Rohan and the Queen in the park of Versailles July 24, 1784, 159; Necklace possibly offered to Queen in 1779, 159; Bassange, the jeweller, shows it to Mme. de La Motte, 162; purchased by Cardinal de Rohan on supposed authority of the Queen, 163; is taken by the male La Motte to London, 163; Boehmer, Bassange’s partner, begs Queen for payment, 165; suspicions of the Cardinal aroused, 166; Mme. de La Motte confesses her forgery, the Queen discovers the plot, 168; Rohan is arrested, 169; tried, 170-75; and acquitted, 176

Dillon, Madame de, Queen’s violent and ephemeral friendship for, 94

Dissipation, early cause of Marie Antoinette’s, 77; origins of coincident with accession, 90, 91; Joseph I.’s plan of reform for, 103; of Queen continued after birth of second child, 135

D’Oliva. _See_ Oliva

Dourlers, French objective on first day of battle of Wattignies, 385, 383; French carry, 389; and retire from, 390

Dreux Brézé, Master of Ceremonies at opening of States-General, 200-201; his famous order to the Commons, 208

Dreyfus Case, parallel between, and affair of Diamond Necklace, 174-175, 177

Drouet, sees the Royal Family in flight to Varennes, 275-76; his gallop to intercept them, 277-79; sees Queen in Temple, 341; sees Queen in prison for last time, 362; rides into Maubeuge, 371; carries news from Maubeuge and is captured, 372

Du Barry, her name first mentioned to Maria Theresa, 32; disastrous influence upon Louis XV.’s reign, 40-44; her character and appearance, 45-46; first meets Marie Antoinette at La Muette, 48-49; Marie Antoinette’s antipathy to her, 54-56; Maria Theresa attempts to break down that antipathy, 58-62; Marie Antoinette’s single speech to, 61; her devotion to Louis XV. at the end of his life, 69; she leaves the Court, 70; exiled to Burgundy on accession of Louis XVI., 83

Dufort, French Ambassador at Vienna at time of Marie Antoinette’s marriage, 30

Dumouriez, chief man in the War Ministry of ’92, 300; Queen obtains his plans and betrays them to the enemy, 300; at battle of Jemappes, 342; defeated at Neerwinden, 352; betrays the country, 352

Dunquerque, Duke of York’s march upon, 368

Earthquake of Lisbon. _See_ Lisbon

Ecclesiastical rights of Rohan, 171

Education of Marie Antoinette, 24-27, 33-36

Edward, Fort, Burgoyne’s tardy advance upon, 111

Elector of Bavaria, his death precipitates the Bavarian diplomatic quarrel, 116

Elizabeth, Madame, Marie Antoinette’s relations with, 122; brought to Paris by mob in Days of October, 230, 231

Emigration, first, 213

Émigrés, disturbing element in the Allies’ camp, 296; their charge at Wattignies, 400

Enghien, emigration after fall of Bastille, 213

England, fiscal position of, during pre-revolutionary and revolutionary period, 86, 87; contrast between fiscal position in eighteenth century and to-day, 88; dominates foreign policy of France on accession of Louis XVI., 100-2; constant colonial policy of, 107; foreign policy of, bound up with closing of the Scheldt, 146

Episcopacy, French, corrupt condition of, before Revolution, 181-82

Etiquette, rigidity of French Courts, 37; strictness and publicity of, on accession of Louis XVI., 80

Europe, civilisation of, peculiar in all history, 1, 2

Extravagance of Marie Antoinette, character of rather than amount remarkable, 89, 90; Marie Antoinette’s first considerable purchase of jewellery, 97

Falkenstein, Count, incognito of Joseph II., in Paris, 103

Fersen, Axel de, first meets Marie Antoinette, 66; revisits Versailles, 118; Marie Antoinette obviously in love with him, 118, 119; leaves her for American War, 119; marches south with Washington to join the French at Yorktown, 126; negotiates surrender of Yorktown, 128; comes again to Versailles in 1784 with King of Sweden, 155; revisits Versailles in 1787, 183; his return to Versailles just before Revolution, 193-95; story of his presence in Queen’s room during days of October, 227 _n._; Bouillé’s son received by, 253; organises the flight of the Royal Family, 260, 261; drives the Royal Family out of Paris in the flight to Varennes, 261, 262; his farewell to the Queen in flight to Varennes, 263; story of ring given him by the Queen, and of his death, 263, 265; the Queen’s letters to him after the failure of the flight to Varennes, 292-93; the Queen’s letter to, in September 1791, 303; his last journey to Paris to help the Royal Family, 303-4; in regular communication with Royal Family to arrange invasion, 310, 311; his communications with the Queen in prison, 349-50

Feuillants, disused monastery, Royal Family lodged in, 330-32

_Figaro, Mariage de_, play by Beaumarchais, its political character, 135-36; popularity among smart set of the time, 140; King refuses permission to act, 145, 147; it is played before the Court, 148; Paris insists on a public performance of, 151; King yields, and public performance takes place on 27th April 1784, 152; its effect upon the régime, 153

Finance. _See_ Fiscal Problem

Finances, French, Calonne appointed to the head of, 149, 150; his loans, 151

Financiers, modern, their vulgar expenditure compared with that of the Court of Versailles, 78, 79

Fiscal Problem of the French preceding the Revolution, 86; contrasted with contemporary fiscal position of England, 86, 87; effect of tradition upon, 88

Flanders, Regiment of, marches into Versailles, 215; its character, 216; banquet given to, 217-20; before the palace on advance of mob, 222

Fleury, exact coincidence of his life with the transition between the anti-Austrian policy of France and diplomatic revolution, 6; at the Exchequer during bankruptcy of the Guémenées, 144

Flight of Royal Family, Mirabeau’s plan for, 252; Bouillé is asked to advise on, 253; how affected by death of Mirabeau, 255, 256; precipitated by the riot of April 17, 1791, 260; Fersen’s rôle in, 260-65; description of, 263-91

Florida Blanca, Spanish Minister, his terror of Great Britain at moment of Burgoyne’s surrender, 112, 113

Fontainebleau, Court gambling at, on accession of Queen, 99; French Court there at moment of Burgoyne’s surrender, 112

Foreign Policy, French, D’Aiguillon ceases to control, on Louis XVI.’s accession, 83, 84; Vergennes controls, on accession of Louis XVI., 84; dominated by the fear of England on accession of Louis XVI., 100-2, 106-8; eagerly seeks Spanish alliance against England, 107; Spanish dread of England forbids this, 112-13; final determination to accept the English challenge, 113; this determination confirmed by Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, 113-14; refuses to support Austria in Bavarian claim, but under pressure from Marie Antoinette pays compensation to Vienna, 116-18; Marie Antoinette’s increasing power over, after Maurepas’ death, 134; attitude of, towards opening of Scheldt, 148, 149; payment of Dutch indemnity to Austria under pressure from the Queen, 161, 165-66, 174

Foulon, murder of, after fall of Bastille, 213

Fouquier Tinville, his speech for the prosecution of the Queen, 380

France, hesitation of, upon the Reformation, 3-5; generally thought in decline during early eighteenth century, 16

France and Austria, causes of original antagonism between, and their final reconciliation in the eighteenth century, 2-9.

Francis of Lorraine, husband of Maria Theresa, his happy marriage, 15; his superstition at Marie Antoinette’s birth, 21; his death, 25

Frankfort, the crowning of the Emperor, the Queen’s nephew there in 1792, 309, 312

Franklin, lands in France, 100; received by Louis XVI., 114

Frederick the Great, his power first apparent at Mollwitz, 6; his betrayal of the Hapsburgs, 8; emotion of Kaunitz on hearing of his death, 14; betrays Louis XV., 21; his initiative in partition of Poland, 62

French Guards. _See_ Gardes Françaises

French Ministerial Tradition. _See_ Ministerial Tradition

Fontainebleau, Dr. Johnson sees the Queen at, 95

Frontier, north-eastern, strategical nature of, 360

Gardes du Corps, their banquet to the Regiment of Flanders, 217-25

Gardes Françaises, almost only French troops in Paris at opening of Revolution, 209

Gates, commanding American forces, receives Burgoyne’s surrender, 112

Geoffrin, Madame, visits Vienna before Marie Antoinette’s marriage, 28

George, Lake, strategical value of, in Burgoyne’s campaign, 109

Girondins, their appearance in the Revolution, 301, 302

Goethe, his judgment on the household of Maria Theresa, 15

Goguelat, second in command of Choiseul’s Hussars, 272; shot at Varennes, 282

Goltz, Prussian Minister at Versailles, his letter on the date of Burgoyne’s surrender, 112

Government, nature of all, 195-96

Guémenée, Madame de, governess to the children of France, Marie Antoinette’s friendship with, 92; bankruptcy of, 142-44

Guillaume, companion of Drouet in his famous ride, 277

Guines, French Ambassador in London, protected by Marie Antoinette, 98

Haga, Comte de, incognito of King of Sweden, 155

Handwriting of Marie Antoinette, quite unformed, 50

Harvest, failure of, in 1775, a cause of Turgot’s unpopularity, 97; difficulty of bringing to Paris in 1789, 216

Hébert visits the Temple, 339; again, 340; again, 353; obtains the Dauphin’s evidence, 373; produces it in Court against the Queen, 381; is passed over in the summing up against the Queen, 394

Henry of Prussia, Prince, visits Versailles in 1784, 160

Herman, chief judge of the Queen at her trial, 374; cross-examines Queen on the affair of the Necklace, 387-88; sums up against the Queen, 393; pronounces sentence of death, 394

Howe sails with 20,000 men to attack Philadelphia, 110

Hudson, Valley of, strategical value of, in Burgoyne’s campaign, 109

Hue, friendly guard of the Royal Family in the Temple, 336

Huguenots, exceptionally tolerated in France, 5-7; contrast of their toleration with persecution of English Catholics, 5-7

Hungary, Joseph II.’s blundering attempt to suppress language of, 131

Invasion, two principal avenues of, into France, 359

Jacobin Society, nature of, 251, 252; Mirabeau subservient to, 251

Jarjayes, his plot to rescue the Queen, 351, 352

Jemappes, battle of, 342

Jewellery. _See_ Extravagance, _also_ Diamond Necklace

Johnson, Doctor, sees Marie Antoinette at Fontainebleau, 95

Joseph II., son of Maria Theresa, first associated with her in the empire, 23; hastens the conclusion of Marie Antoinette’s marriage, 30, 31; accompanies Marie Antoinette for the first day on her journey to Versailles before her marriage, 36;

his visit to Versailles and France, 99, 103-6; his insufficient character, 103; his ignorance of La Marck and Lavoisier, 105; his ludicrous misjudgment of French military power, 105; revisits Versailles July 1781, 126; his bungling in religion, 131; summons French to abandon Revolution, 238; dies, 238

Jourdan, description of, 375; in command at Wattignies, overruled by Carnot, 391

June the Twentieth, rising of, in 1792, 305

Jury to try the Queen, 377-78

Kaunitz, origin of his career, 9; makes Marie Antoinette the pledge of diplomatic revolution, 9; his character and appearance, 9-11; his early diplomatic work for Maria Theresa, 12; takes up the Austrian Embassy in Paris, 12; his French tastes, 12-13

Korff, Baroness de, alias of Duchesse de Tourzel in flight to Varennes, 261

La Fayette volunteers for the American War, 103; leaves Richmond, 126; Marie Antoinette visits wife of, as a compliment after surrender of Yorktown, 135; marching from Paris to help the Court in Days of October, 226; his lack of judgment in defending the palace, 227; advises the Royal Family after victory of the mob, 229; fails to restrain mob on 18th April 1791, 259; his action in massacre of Champ de Mars, 301

Lagny, post-master of Chaintry, 268

La Marck, founder of the evolutionary theory, Joseph II.’s ignorance of, 105; friend of Mirabeau, introduces him to the Crown, 242, 243; visits Mirabeau’s deathbed, 255

Lamballe, Princesse de, first meeting with Marie Antoinette, 40; post of Superintendente created for her, with salary, 94; Queen’s friendship for, 92; companion of the Queen in her escapade upon the sledge, 96, 97; accompanies Marie Antoinette in her first retirement to the Tuileries, 122; removed from Royal Family in Temple, 335, 336; her murder, 338

La Motte, Madame de (_see_ Diamond Necklace), escapes from prison and flies to London, 179; her supposed innocence and martyrdom, 180

La Muette, palace or royal hunting-box of, scene of Marie Antoinette’s first meeting with Madame du Barry before marriage, 47; scene of Marie Antoinette’s condescension and patronage on accession, 81; Maximilian’s arrival at, 91; Marie Antoinette visits, after her first churching, 121; Queen foolishly present at, during Parisian excitement upon bankruptcy of the Guémenées, 144

Latour du Pin bears witness for the Queen at her trial, 387

Lavoisier, Joseph II.’s ignorance of, 105

L’Echelle, Rue de, rendezvous of Royal Family and Fersen for flight to Varennes, 261

Lee, delegate of the revolted British colonists in America, received by Louis XVI., 114

Legislative Assembly, receives the Royal Family on retirement from Tuileries, 326; permits the imprisonment of the Royal Family in the Temple, 332

Leonard, the Queen’s hairdresser, contributes to disaster of Varennes, 272 _n._; takes note from Choiseul to commanders of various posts, 274

Leopold, Emperor, brother of the Queen, accession of, 238; receives at Padua false news of the success of the flight to Varennes, 292-93; Queen’s decisive letter to, in 1791, 297; his death, 299

Le Quay, real name of the woman Oliva, _q.v._

Lequesnoy surrenders, 371

Lisbon, character of town of, in eighteenth century, 19; earthquake of, coincident with Marie Antoinette’s birth, 20-21

_Logotachygraphe_, Revolutionary journal, Royal Family lodged in the reporters’ box of, 329, 330

Loménie de Brienne, proposed by the Queen as successor to Calonne, April 1787, 181; his character, 182-83; acting with the Queen, attempts to adjourn the States-General, 189; fall of, 195

Lorraine (Francis of, _see_ Francis), princesses of, umbrage given by their precedence at the Court ballon Marie Antoinette’s marriage, 52-53

Louis XV. at opening of diplomatic revolution, 16; his reticence and hesitation in the matter of his grandson’s marriage, 27-31; his appearance on Marie Antoinette’s first meeting with him, 38-40; feels the approach of death, 67; effect of Court sermon on, before death, 67; falls ill of small-pox, 68; his strong Christian faith, 69; dismisses Madame du Barry, 70; receives the Last Sacrament, 70-72; his death, 72

Louis XVI. left heir on his father’s death, 26; his appearance at that moment, 26; his mother, after the death of the Dauphin her husband, opposes the Austrian marriage, 28; her death, 29; ceremony of his marriage as Dauphin to Marie Antoinette, 50, 51; his accession, 73; supposed impotence, 74-77; publicly ridiculed by his wife in early days of his marriage, 93; coronation of, 93-95; Joseph II. visits Versailles to effect cure of, 104, 105; date of operation upon, 105 (_see also_ Appendix A); consents to receive delegates of United States, 114; influence of Maurepas upon, 133; grants _Moratorium_ on Marie Antoinette’s express prayer in the Guémenée bankruptcy, ill effect of this, 144; visits Cherbourg, 177, 178; one of very small minority that practised religion before Revolution, 182; his appearance at opening of States-General, 201; fails to receive deputation of Tiers État, 202; quarrel with States-General opens, 204; at Royal Session of, 23rd June 1789, 206-7; his final decision on Votes by Order, 207; flight debated during capture of Bastille, 212; his Veto discussed, 214; his flight again urged by the Queen, in October 1789, 217; shooting at Chatillon when Paris was marching on Versailles, 220-22; hesitates to fly in Days of October, 226; brought to Paris by mob in Days of October, 230, 231; Marie Antoinette ridicules him in a letter to her relatives after Days of October, 233; his rôle in flight to Varennes, 261; first recognised during flight at Viels-Maisons, 267; and again at Chaintry, 268; and once more at Chalons, 269; recognised in Ste. Menehould, 276; vetoes prosecution of non-juring clergy and formation of volunteer camp, 304; his note of credentials to Mallet du Pan, 311; ridiculed at his last review, 321; retires from Tuileries, 325; signs order to cease fire, 328; his sword removed in the Temple, 336; separated from his family in the Temple, 340; condemned to death, 344; last interview with his family, 345; his execution, 346, 347

Madame. _See_ Adelaide

Madame Elizabeth, her passage of arms with Pétion, 287-88; watches sun rise with the Queen before attack upon the palace, 320. _See also_ Elizabeth

Madame Royale, the Queen’s daughter, her first Communion, 232, 234-35. _See also_ D’Angoulême

Maillard leads march of Paris on Versailles, 223

Mallet du Pan negotiates with the enemy for the King, 310, 311, 312

Mandat, head of the Paris Militia, his organisation of defence of the palace in August 1792, 320, 321; murder of, 322

Manège, the Riding-school of the Tuileries, National Assembly installed in, 232

Mangin, his ride to carry news to Paris of the arrest of the King, 284-85

Manifesto of Brunswick, the Queen the author of its threat against Paris, 310-12; (Clause VIII.) known in Paris, 312; announced to the Assembly, 316

Manuel bears evidence against the Queen, 384

Mareuil, Commissioners meet Royal Family at, returning to Paris from Varennes, 285-86

Maria of Saxony, widow of the first Dauphin, and mother of Louis XVI., her opposition to Austrian marriage, 28; her death, 29

Maria Theresa, devotion of Kaunitz to, 11; character of, 13, 14; married life of, 15; her negotiation for French alliance, 18; health at birth of Marie Antoinette, 21; her negotiations for Marie Antoinette’s marriage, 27, 28; associates her son Joseph with her government, 30; hears of the Du Barry, 32; letter to Marie Antoinette on her leaving Vienna, 36; her judgment of a happy marriage, 37; early letters of Marie Antoinette to her, 54; her repeated letters to Marie Antoinette as Dauphine, urging reconciliation with Du Barry, 59, 61, 63; her anxiety as to Louis XVI.’s condition, 65, 76, 77, 105, also Appendix A; her letters advising Marie Antoinette’s policy, 82; she hears news of Marie Antoinette’s first pregnancy, 115; her last illness and death, 125

Marie Theresa Charlotte. _See_ Madame Royale

Marly, Court gambling at, 99

Marriage, slowness of negotiations for Marie Antoinette’s, 27-31; Maria Theresa’s judgment upon a happy, 37; ceremony of Marie Antoinette’s, at Versailles, 49-51; great storm coincident with, 51; public disaster in Paris on occasion of, 53-54; doubts upon, 74-77

Marseillaise, first sung in Marseilles, 309; at Wattignies, 399

Marseilles, Battalion of, organised, 309; marched into Paris, 313; brawl with Paris troops, 316; their artillery against the palace, 327; their capture of prisoners from the Guard, 329; parley with Swiss before attacking Tuileries, 327

Martin, d’Auch, refuses oath in Tennis Court, 205

Maubeuge, its position on the first line of invasion, 359; last stronghold against invasion on north-eastern frontier, 361, 362; threatened by Coburg, 367; Drouet arrives in, 371, 372; lack of provisions in, 373; cavalry patrol cut their way out of, 374; hears the guns of the French advance, 383; attempt to force passage to, on 15th of October fails, 385-90; extreme peril of, in consequence of this, 391; relieved by French victory at Wattignies, 401

Maubourg nominated to bring the King back to Paris, 285

Maurepas, chosen to be Minister on accession of Louis XVI., 82; his death, 132; character of, 133

Maury, example of French hierarchy before Revolution, 182

Maximilian, Marie Antoinette’s youngest brother, visits Paris in 1775, 91

Mayence, siege of, prevents invasion, 355

Mayor of Paris, Bailly the first, 212

Measles, Queen suffers from, in spring of 1779, 121

Meaux, first passage of Royal Family through, in flight to Varennes, 266; Marie Antoinette and Barnave at, during return journey, 288, 289

Mercenaries, most troops in Paris in 1789 foreign, 209

Mercy, d’Argenteau, becomes Ambassador at Versailles for Maria Theresa in 1766, 27; notes Artois’ “shocking familiarity” with the Queen, 92; desires the Queen to be crowned with the King, 93; tries to dissuade Queen from opposing Turgot, 98; intrigues for Marie Antoinette to support Austria’s Bavarian policy, 105, 106; influences Marie Antoinette in favour of Austrian policy on the Bavarian succession, 117-18; a description of him and his household, 124-25; clumsily pressed by Joseph II. to influence Queen in affair of Scheldt, 137; meets Mirabeau in La Marck’s house, 243; Queen betrays to him the plans of the French defence in 1792, 300; in regular communication with Royal Family to arrange invasion, 311

Mesdames, Louis XV.’s daughters, Marie Antoinette first meets at Compiègne, 39; support Marie Antoinette as Dauphine against the Du Barry, 60; gradually lose their influence over the Dauphine, 63; give the name of “Autrichienne” to Marie Antoinette, 64

Michonis, the Municipal, sympathetic jailer of the Queen, 350; helps the Batz plot, 354; his plot to help the Queen out of the Conciergerie, 369-370

Militia, new popular, of Paris, after July ’89, La Fayette at head of, 212; of Versailles, their part in the Days of October, 218-19; new of Paris, their failure to restrain the mob on 18th April 1791, 259

Ministerial tradition, French, its transformation in early years of Louis XVI. produces the Revolution, 81, 82

Ministry, French, permanent character of, 148

Ministry of Resistance, Queen’s plan to destroy States-General, 210-13; fails, 213

Mirabeau, noted by populace at opening of States-General, 200; reluctantly accepts oath in Tennis Court, 205; his doubtful reply to Dreux Brézé, 208; during Days of October, 223; his influence on the Court, 239-56; his position in 1790, 241, 242; La Marck, friend of, introduces to the Crown, 242; his debts and subsidy, 243, 244; his interview with the Queen, 245; his written advice to the Crown, 246, 247; his attitude towards Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 250, 251; his plan for the flight of the Royal Family and Civil War, 251-53; his death, 255

Mireur, from Montpellier, sings the Marseillaise in Marseilles, 309

Mohawk Valley, British force in, marching to join Burgoyne, repulsed, 111

Monarchy, French, its national nature, 41; publicity of, 41-42; mystical quality of, 78-80; publicity of, 80; fate of, had Mirabeau survived, 240

Monsieur. _See_ Provence

Montmédy decided on as refuge for the Royal Family, 260

_Moratorium_, or stay of legal proceedings, granted by King to the Guémenées on their bankruptcy, 144

Mounier, in chair of Assembly during Days of October, 223

Mollwitz, first great Prussian victory, 6

Mozart meets little Marie Antoinette, 28

Nancy, mutiny at, 247, 248

Napoleon, his verdict upon the affair of the Diamond Necklace, 177; his judgment of power to defend the Tuileries, 325; upon Wattignies, 401

Narbonne, Archbishop of, example of French hierarchy before the Revolution, 182

National Assembly (before p. 218, _see_ States-General) passes last clauses of new Constitution coincidently with Banquet of the Body Guard, October 1789, 218; votes thanks for suppression of mutiny at Nancy, 248; installed in Manège after Days of October, 232

Navy, British, terror inspired by, in 1776, 100; French, Sartines, Minister of, on accession of Louis XVI., 85; sails from Toulon to attack English forces in America, 1778, 115

Necker, his character and religion, 98, 99; his daughter, offered in marriage to Fersen and to Pitt, finally marries M. de Staël, 98; fails to administrate finances, and is dismissed for the first time in 1781, 127; Queen responsible for his return to the Finances after fall of Loménie, 195; character of, 197; ostensibly fixes number of Tiers État, 197; re-summons Notables in late 1788, 198; abandons question of “Vote by Orders,” 198; his appearance and long speech at opening of States-General, 201-2; calculated absence from Royal Session, 206; dismissal of, July 11, 1789, 210; recalled by Louis XVI., 213; flight of, 248

Neerwinden, Dumouriez’ defeat at, 352

New Order, the Queen’s plan for efficient despotic government before Revolution, 190-92; its breakdown, 192

Noailles, Madame de, Mistress of the Ceremonies to Marie Antoinette as Dauphine, 37, 48

Nobles, minority of, joins Commons led by Orleans, 209

Nord, Comte du, incognito of the Grand-Duke Paul, 139

Notables, Assembly of, summoned by Calonne, 178; failure of the experiment of, 180; stupidly re-summoned by Necker, 198

Oath of Tennis Court. _See_ Tennis Court

October, Days of, 215-32

Œil de Bœuf during Days of October, 228

Oliva or “d’Oliva,” employed by Mme. de La Motte to represent the Queen, 157; plays the part of the Queen in the meeting with Rohan, 158-59; arrested in Brussels, winter of 1785, 175; acquitted, 176

Orleans, Duke of. _See also_ Chartres

—— Duke of (formerly Duc de Chartres), his opposition to the Queen’s government before the Revolution, 190; cheered by mob at opening of States-General, 200; ambition for throne, supports Paris against Crown in first movement of Revolution, 209

Pannizardi, destruction of the original telegram in Dreyfus Case compared to Vergennes’ action in Diamond Necklace case, 168

Paris, Marie Antoinette’s entry to, as Dauphine, 65; supported by Duke of Orleans in 1789, 209; Queen’s plan for coercion of, in July 1789, 210; names of regiments coercing, 210; rises and captures Bastille, 210-12; new municipality of, Bailly elected Mayor, 212; marches on Versailles in October 1789, 220-22, 225; Royal Family brought to, by the mob in the Days of October, 230, 231; re-entry of Royal fugitives from Varennes into, 289-291; Queen’s attitude towards, after return from Varennes, 298; threat to destroy, in Brunswick’s Manifesto, drawn up by the Queen, 310-13

Parlement of Paris exiled by Louis XV., 59; nature of, 97; its opposition to Turgot’s reforms, 97, 98; demand the States-General, 183-84; refuses to accept Loménie’s reforms, 189; makes a final appeal for the States-General, 191

Passy, Chaumont’s house in, the refuge of the American delegates, 100

Paul, Grand-Duke, heir to Catherine of Russia, visits Versailles, 139-42; hears Beaumarchais read _Figaro_, 140

Persuasion the only instrument of Government, 40, 41

Pétion nominated to bring King back to Paris, 285; his adventure with Madame Elizabeth, 287-88; as Mayor of Paris in 1792 receives the Marseillese, 313

Philadelphia attacked successfully by Howe, contemporaneously with Burgoyne’s advance, 110

Picard recognises the King during flight at Viels-Maisons, 267

Pillnitz, Declaration of, its exact significance, 302

Pinks, affair of the, plot to get the Queen out of the Conciergerie, 369, 370

Planta, a gentleman follower of Cardinal de Rohan’s, present at the supposititious interview with the Queen, 159

Poland, its partition, character of, 61-63

Polignac, Comtesse de, friendship of Marie Antoinette with, 92; Queen quarrels with, 179; her clique, scandal of public subsidies to, 123; emigration after fall of Bastille, 213

Pompadour, Madame de, Mistress of Louis XV., her rôle in diplomatic revolution, 18; her character and dignity, 43, 44

Portugal, King and Queen of, chosen as god-parents of Marie Antoinette, 18-19

Pot, first holder of post of Master of Ceremonies, 208 _n._

Premonition of Marie Antoinette relative to Temple, 164

Protestant States of Europe, French diplomatic support of, after Reformation, 5-6

Provence, Comtesse de, unintentional insult to, at birth of the Dauphine, 129; possibly protects Mme. de La Motte, 139

Provence, Monsieur, Comte de, present at the first playing of _Figaro_, 152; brought to Paris by the mob in Days of October, 230, 231

Prussia, revelation of power of, at Mollwitz, 6; growing menace of Poland to, in modern times, 62

Racing introduced into France on accession of Louis XVI., 92

Red Book, publication of, 239

Reformation, origin of the cycle which closes with the Diplomatic Revolution, 2; its probable effect if universal, 3; French hesitation upon, 3, 4

Religious Orders, Joseph II.’s suppression of, 131

Representation never so full as in States-General of 1789, 198

Representative System, its character and origin in Europe, 184-87

Resistance, Ministry of. _See_ Ministry

Rheims, Louis XVI.’s coronation at, 93-95; flight by way of, rejected by King, 260

Rhodes, title of Pot, 208 _n._

Riding-school. _See_ Manège

Ring, the Queen’s, story of, 263-65

Robespierre at Oath in Tennis Court, 205; during Days of October, 223; demands the Queen’s trial on the breakdown of French armies in Holland, 352

Roderigo Hortalez. _See_ Beaumarchais

Roederer advises King to retire from Tuileries, 325

Rohan, Bishop, coadjutor of, later Cardinal de, Marie Antoinette’s first meeting with, 38 (_see_ Diamond Necklace; after acquittal King strips him of his functions and exiles him); his later career and death, 177

Rohan, Cardinal de, example of French hierarchy before the Revolution, 182

Romeuf. _See_ Bayon

Rosalie, name of the girl who served the Queen in the Conciergerie, 365

Rothschild, difficulty of trying one to-day compared with difficulty of trying a Rohan in eighteenth century, 171

Royal Session. _See_ Session

Royale, Madame. _See_ Madame Royale

Sacrament, Last, received by Louis XV., 71; parallel between it and the French Monarchy, 78

St. Antoine, Gate of, Marseillese march in by, 313; workmen’s quarter of, join St. Marcel in insurrection of Aug. 10, 316, 317

St. Cloud, Palace of, bought for first Dauphin in his illness, 160; scene of Mirabeau’s interview with the Queen, 244, 245; Louis’ abortive attempt to reach, on 18th April 1791, 259

St. Germain l’Auxerrois, Church of, Madame Royale’s communion in, 234

St. Landry, schismatic priest of, appointed to accompany Queen at her execution, 395

St. Lawrence, Valley of, strategical value during rebellion of American colonies, 108, 109

St. Marcel. _See_ St. Antoine

Ste. Menehould, its position, 270; Royal Family at, in flight to Varennes, 275-76

Saratoga, Burgoyne blockaded near, and surrenders, 112; news of Burgoyne’s capitulation at, reaches Versailles, after Vergennes had determined to recognise United States, 113

Sauce, official at Varennes, his action in detaining the King, 279-81

Scheldt, opening of the, first mentioned, 134; Marie Antoinette supports her brother in, 137; character of quarrel over, explained, 145, 146; Joseph II.’s increasing irritation over, 148; Vergennes refuses to support Austria in, 149; the Dutch fire on one of Joseph II.’s ships in, 4th October 1784, 160; French Cabinet again, under pressure from Queen, pay the Dutch indemnity to Austria for this incident, 161; money actually paid over, 164-65; and is received in cash by Austria when affair of Diamond Necklace is at its height; consequent unpopularity of Queen, 174

September, Massacres of, 337, 338

Sergent serves out ammunition to the rebels, 317

Session, Royal, summoned for 22nd of June 1789, 204; held, June 23rd, 206-7

Siéyès at Oath in Tennis Court, 205

Silesia, forcible occupation of, by Prussia, moral revolution involved by this, 8

Simon, reputed tenderness of, in the Temple, 341

Sledge, Queen’s escapade upon, 96, 97

Soissons, Marie Antoinette’s arrival at, on her journey to her marriage, 38

Solstice, summer, date unlucky for the Bourbons, 261-63, 305

Somme-Vesle, posting station of, place arranged for the first cavalry guard during flight to Varennes, 271; Choiseul’s hussars at, 272; abandoned by Choiseul, 273, 274

Souberbielle visits Queen in Conciergerie, 369; on jury that tries her, 377

Spain, greatness of, in sixteenth century, difficulty of understanding to-day, 4; French maintain their independence against, 5

Stahrenberg, Austrian Ambassador in Paris after Kaunitz, 18; his last letter to Maria Theresa announces certitude of Marie Antoinette’s marriage, 27

Stars and Stripes first seen in Europe, 100

States-General, Crown of mediæval representative system in Europe, 185; Parlement insists on their being summoned, 184-89; Loménie and the Queen propose calling them within five years with the object of adjourning and nullifying the summons, 189; summoned by administrative order, accepted by the Queen, on 8th August 1788, 192 (after October 1789 and p. 222, _see_ National Assembly); number of Tiers État in, ostensibly fixed by Necker, 197; only fully representative assembly in Europe, 198; opening of, 198-202; declared “National Assembly,” 204; Royal session of, June 23, 1789, 206-7; under military threat declare themselves “inviolable,” 209; permanent sitting of, during capture of Bastille, 211-12

Stormont, Lord, English Ambassador at Versailles, present at the ball where news of the Independence of the United States was received, leaves Versailles, 115

Strasburg, Marie Antoinette’s arrival at, on her journey to her marriage, 37; Bishop of, _see_ Rohan

Sweden, Gustavus, King of, visits Versailles in 1784; his Quixotic character, 155; his death, 300

Swiss Guard before palace of Versailles in Days of October, 1789, 222; their mutiny at Nancy, 247; their character and position before the fall of the palace, 314; turned through long gallery and forced out of the Tuileries by the mob, 328

Talleyrand, example of French Hierarchy before the Revolution, 182; proposes confiscation of the goods of the Clergy, 237; visits Mirabeau’s deathbed, 255

Tea Tax. _See_ Boston and America

Temple, Artois receives Marie Antoinette at, her premonitions with regard to, 164; Royal Family first lodged in, 333-35

Tennis Court, Oath of, 205

Theatre, Marie Antoinette’s, at Trianon inaugurated, 123; Mercy’s disapproval of, 124

Ticonderoga abandoned by American forces, before Burgoyne, 110

Tiers État, number of, ostensibly fixed by Necker, 197; Louis XVI. fails to receive deputation of, 202; affirms in May ’89 principle of voting in One Assembly, 202; summons Clergy and Nobles, 203; committed to first revolutionary act by declaring themselves the National Assembly, 204; remain in Hall after order to disperse, 23rd June 1789, 207

Tison, jailor and spy upon the Royal Family in the Temple, 336; wife of, goes mad, 354

Toulouse, Archbishop of, Confessor of Marie Antoinette, 244

Tourzel, Madame de, made governess of children of France after Mme. de Polignac’s emigration, 214

—— Duchess of, her rôle during flight to Varennes, 261; Duchesse de, removed from Royal Family in Temple, 335

Trial of the Queen, preliminary interrogation, 373-74; main trial, 377-400

Trianon, public exaggeration of its real cost, theatre started in, 123; theatre at, thrown open to large audience, 135; Queen retires to, after death of her last child, 188; theatre at, re-opened with a new play of Beaumarchais’ in the midst of the Diamond Necklace affair, 172; Marie Antoinette at, during Days of October, 224

Tronçon Ducourdray named to defend the Queen, 374

Tuileries, arrival of Royal Family at, in Days of October, 231; invaded by mob on 20th June 1792, 305, 306; fall of, 307-29; extent of armed force in defence of, 313, 315; condition and garrison of, just before the attack upon, 318-320; last review before defence of, 321; beginning of attack upon, 322, 323; Napoleon’s judgment of power to defend, 325

Turgot, enters Ministry after accession of Louis XVI., 84; Marie Antoinette not connected with nomination of, 84; policy and character of, 85; fiscal problem presented to him, 86-88; his way of dealing with it, 89; is lavish with funds to the Queen, 85, 89-90; his reforms cause popular suffering, 90; their unwise side, 97; opposed by the Parlement of Paris, 97; his fall largely due to the Queen, 98; servant of the Queen in the Temple and authority for history of period, 349

United States of America recognised by Vergennes before the news of Saratoga, 113; delegates of, received by Louis XVI., 114; formally recognised by France, 21st of January 1778, 115; France goes to war to support, 115

Valenciennes, surrender of, 363

Vallet, son-in-law of post-master at Chaintry, recognises King, 268

Valmy, battle of, 339, 340; mill of, passed by fugitives in flight to Varennes, 275

Varennes, flight to, described, 263-291; town of, Drouet enters, 278; Royal Family detained in, 279-81; departure of Royal Family from, 282, 283

Vergennes, becomes director of foreign policy on accession of Louis XVI., his great abilities, 84; his acute panic just before Burgoyne’s surrender, 110; caution and fear of England at moment of Burgoyne’s surrender, 113; determines to recognise United States before hearing news of Saratoga, 113; refuses to support Austria in Bavarian claim, but under pressure from Queen pays compensation to Vienna, 116-18; practically first Minister after Maurepas’ death, 133; his patriotic refusal to support Joseph II. in the affair of the Scheldt, 149; but consents to pay indemnity, 161; his policy of silence in the case of the Diamond Necklace compared to the French modern Foreign Office destroying the Pannizardi telegram, 168; death of, 179

Vermond (physician), brother of Abbé, attends Queen’s first childbirth, 120

Vermond (Abbé), Marie Antoinette’s tutor, librarian of Mazarin collection and protégé of Loménie de Brienne, 33; attempts to educate Marie Antoinette, 33-36; emigration after fall of Bastille, 213

Versailles, palace of, eruption of mob into, in Days of October, 227-229

Veto of Crown over legislation, discussion on, 214

—— of Louis XVI. against prosecution of non-juring Clergy and formation of volunteer camp, 304

Viels-Maisons, posting station, Louis XVI. first recognised at, in flight to Varennes, 267

Viet, post-master at Chalons, 269

Vilette, Rétaux de, an old soldier, forges the so-called Queen’s letters for the La Motte, 155, 156; writes a letter, purporting to be from Queen, asking Rohan for money, 162; takes Diamond Necklace from Rohan acting as supposed Queen’s messenger, 163; arrested at Geneva in the spring of 1786, 175; condemned to transportation, 176

Vote by Order, prime question before States-General, 198; decision as to, announced by Barentin, 201; decision as to, in Royal Session, 207; Crown advises Union of Orders, 209

Walpole, Horace, his admiration for Marie Antoinette, 95

War, first declaration of, between Europe and Revolution, responsibility for, 293-95; advance towards, originates in Queen’s letter to her brother, 297; declared on 20th April 1792, 300

Washington, his defeat on the Brandywine, 110; marches south to join the French before Yorktown, 126

Weissembourg, lines of, their strategical importance, 355

Wattignies, battle of, described, 385-401; village of, scene of final charge against Austrians before Maubeuge, 396

Weber, family of, Marie Antoinette put out to nurse with, 23

Wine, Marie Antoinette’s curious aversion to, 77, 92; Mercy, an excellent judge of, 124

York, Duke of, marches on Dunquerque, 368

Yorktown, Cornwallis surrenders at, 128; coincident with Joseph II.’s “Edict of Toleration” and birth of Marie Antoinette’s heir, 131, 132

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that: was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=) had extra character spacing by “plus” signs (+stretched+). ○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that the following letter or letters was intended to be a superscript, as in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century. ○ Superscripts are used to indicate numbers raised to a power. In this plain text document, they are represented by characters like this: “P^3” or “10^{18}”, i.e. P cubed or 10 to the 18th power.