The Life of Marie Antoinette

CHAPTER XXVIII. Great Tumults in the Provinces.-Mutiny in the Marquis de Bouille's Army. -Disorder of the Assembly.-Difficulty of managing Mirabeau.-Mercy is removed to The Hague.-Marie Antoinette sees constant Changes in the Aspect of Affairs.-Marat denounces Her.-Attempts are made to assassinate Her.-Resignation of Mirabeau.-Misconduct of the Emigrant Princes.

But men less blinded by the feverish excitement of revolutionary enthusiasm would have seen but little in the state of France at this time to regard as matter for exultation. Many of the recent measures of the Assembly, and especially the extinction of the old provinces, had created great discontent in the rural districts. Formidable riots had broken out in many quarters, especially in the great southern cities, in some of which the mob had rivaled the worst excesses of its Parisian brethren; massacring the magistrates, tearing their bodies into pieces, and terrifying the peaceable inhabitants by processions, in which the mangled remains of their victims formed the most conspicuous feature. At Brest and at Toulon the sailors showed that they fully shared the general dissatisfaction; while in the army a formidable mutiny broke out among the troops which were under the command of the Marquis de Bouille, in Lorraine. That, indeed, had a different object, since it had been excited by Jacobin emissaries, who were aware that the marquis, the soldier who, of the whole French army at that time, enjoyed the highest reputation, was firmly attached to the king; though he was not one of the nobles who had opposed all reform, nor had he hesitated to follow his royal master's example and to declare his acceptance of the new Constitution. Fortunately he had subalterns worthy of him, and faithful to their oaths; and as he was a man of great promptitude and decision, he, with their aid, quelled the mutiny, though not without a sanguinary conflict, in which he himself lost above four hundred men, while the loss which he inflicted on the mutineers was far heavier. But he had set a noble example, and had given an undeniable proof of the possibility of quelling the most formidable tumults; and it may be said that his quarters were the only spot in all France which was not wholly given up to anarchy and disorder.

For even the Assembly itself was a prey to tumult and violence. From the time of its assuming that title admission had been given to every one who could force his way into the chamber, whether he was a member or not; nor was any order preserved among those who thus obtained admission; but they were allowed to express their opinion of every speaker and of every speech by friendly or unfriendly clamor: a practice which, as may well be supposed, materially influenced many votes. And presently attendance for that purpose became a trade; some of the most violent deputies hiring a regularly appointed troop to take their station in the galleries, and paying them daily wages to applaud or hiss in accordance with the signs which they themselves made from the body of the hall.[1] And if the populace was thus the master of the Assembly while at Versailles, this was far more the case after its removal to Paris, where the number of the idle portion of the population furnished the Jacobins with far greater means of intimidating their adversaries.

It was remarkable that La Marck himself, as has been already intimated, did not fully share the hopes which the king and queen founded on the adhesion of Mirabeau. It was not only that on one point he had sounder views than Mirabeau himself-doubting, as he did, whether the mischief which his vehement friend had formerly done could now be undone by the same person, merely because he had changed his mind-but he also felt doubts of Mirabeau's steadiness in his new path, and feared lest eagerness for popularity, or an innate levity of disposition, might still lead him astray. As he described him in a letter to Mercy, "he was sometimes very great and sometimes very little; he could be very useful, and he could be very mischievous: in a word, he was often above, and sometimes greatly below, any other man." At another time he speaks of him as "by turns imprudent through excess of confidence, and lukewarm from distrust;" and this estimate of the great demagogue, which was not very incorrect, shows, too, how high an opinion La Marck had formed of the queen's ability and force of character, for he looks to her "to put a curb on his inconstancy,[2]" trusting for that result not so much to her power of fascination as to her clearness of view and resolution.

And she herself was never so misled by her high estimate of Mirabeau's abilities and influence as to think his judgment unerring. On the contrary, her comment to Mercy on one of the earliest letters which he addressed to the king was that it was "full of madness from one end to the other," and she asked "how he, or any one else, could expect that at such a moment the king and she could be induced to provoke a civil war?" alluding, apparently, to his urgent advice that the royal family should leave Paris, a step of the necessity for which she was not yet convinced. Her hope evidently was that he would bring forward some motions in the Assembly which might at least arrest the progress of mischief, and perhaps even pave the way for the repair of some of the evil already done.

On one point she partly agreed with him, but not wholly. He insisted on the necessity of dismissing the ministers; but she, though thinking them, both as a body and individually, unequal to the crisis, saw great difficulty in replacing them, since the vote of the preceding winter forbade the king to select their successors from the members of the Assembly;[3] and she feared also lest, if he should dismiss them, the Assembly would carry out a plan which, as it seemed to her, it already showed great inclination to adopt, of managing every thing by means of committees, and preventing the appointment of any new administration. Her view of the situation, and of the king's and her position, varied from time to time, as indeed their circumstances and the views of the Assembly appeared to alter. In August she is in great distress, caused by a decision of the emperor to remove Mercy to the Hague. "I am," she writes to the embassador, "in despair at your departure, especially at a moment when affairs are becoming every day more embarrassing and more painful, and when I have therefore the greater need of an attachment as sincere and enlightened as yours. But I feel that all the powers, under different pretexts, will withdraw their ministers one after another. It is impossible to leave them incessantly exposed to this disorder and license; but such is my destiny, and I am forced to endure the horror of it to the very end.[4]" But a fortnight later she tells Madame de Polignac that "for some days things have been wearing a better complexion. She can not feel very sanguine, the mischievous folks having such an interest in perverting every thing, and in hindering every thing which, is reasonable, and such means of doing so; but at the moment the number of ill-intentioned people is diminished, or at least the right-thinking of all classes and of all ranks are more united ... You may depend upon it," she adds, "that misfortunes have not diminished my resolution or my courage: I shall not lose any of that; they will only give me more prudence.[5]" Indeed, her own strength of mind, fortitude, and benevolence were the only things in France which were not constantly changing at this time; and she derived one lesson from the continued vicissitudes to which she was exposed, which, if partly grievous, was also in part full of comfort and encouragement to so warm a heart. "It is in moments such as these that one learns to know men, and to see who are truly attached to one, and who are not. I gain every day fresh experiences in this point; sometimes cruel, sometimes pleasant; for I am continually finding that some people are truly and sincerely attached to us, to whom I never gave a thought."

Another of her old vexations was revived in the renewed jealousy of Austrian influence with which the Jacobin leaders at this time inspired the mob, and which was so great that, when in the autumn Leopold sent the young Prince de Lichtenstein as his envoy to notify his accession, Marie Antoinette could only venture to give him a single audience; and, greatly as she enjoyed the opportunity of gathering from him news of Vienna and of the old friends of the childhood of whom she still cherished an affectionate recollection, she was yet forced to dismiss him after a few minutes' conversation, and to beg him to accelerate his departure from Paris, lest even that short interview should be made a pretext for fresh calumnies. "The kindest thing that any Austrian of mark could do for her," she told her brother, "was to keep away from Paris at present.[6]" She would gladly have seen the Assembly interest itself a little in the politics of the empire, where Leopold's own situation was full of difficulties; but the French had not yet come to consider themselves as justified in interfering in the internal government of other countries. As she describes their feelings to the emperor, "They feel their own individual troubles, but those of their neighbors do not yet affect them; and the names of Liberty and Despotism are so deeply engraved in their heads, even though they do not clearly define them, that they are everlastingly passing from the love of the former to the dread of the latter;" and then she adds a sketch of her own ideas and expectations, and of the objects which she conceives it her duty to keep in view, in which it is affecting to see that her utter despair of any future happiness for the king and herself in no degree weakens her desire to promote the happiness of the very people who have caused her suffering. "Our task is to watch skillfully for the moment when men's heads have returned to proper ideas sufficiently to make them enjoy a reasonable and honest freedom, such as the king has himself always desired for the happiness of his people; but far from that license and anarchy which have precipitated the fairest of kingdoms into all possible miseries. Our health continues good, but it would be better if we could only perceive the least gleam of happiness around us; as for ourselves, that is at an end forever, happen what will. I know that it is the duty of a king to suffer for others; and it is one which we are discharging thoroughly."

She had indeed at this time sufferings to which it is characteristic of her undaunted courage that she never makes the slightest allusion in her letters. Of all the Jacobin party, one of the most blood-thirsty was a wretch named Marat.[7] At the very outset of the Revolution he had established a newspaper to which he gave the name of The People's Friend, and the staple topic of which was the desirableness of bloodshed and massacre. He had been exasperated at the receptions given to the royal family at the festival of July; and for some weeks afterward his efforts were directed to inflame the populace to a new riot, in which the king and queen should be dragged into Paris from St. Cloud, as in 1789 they had been dragged in from Versailles, and which should end in the murder of the queen, the ministers, and several hundreds of other innocent persons; and his denunciations very nearly bore a part of their intended fruit. The royal family had hardly returned to St. Cloud, when a man named Rotondo was apprehended in the inner garden, who confessed that he had made his way into it with the express design of assassinating Marie Antoinette, a design which was only balked by the fortunate accident of a heavy shower which prevented her from leaving the house; and a week or two afterward a second plot was discovered, the contrivers of which designed to poison her. Her attendants were greatly alarmed; and her physician furnished Madame Campan with an antidote for such poisons as seemed most likely to be employed. But Marie Antoinette herself cared little for such precautions. Assassination was not the end which she anticipated. On one occasion, when she found Madame Campan changing some powdered sugar which, it was suspected, might have been tampered with, she thanked her, and praised M. Vicq-d'Azyr, the physician by whose instructions Madame Campan was acting, but told her that she was giving herself needless trouble. "Depend upon it," she added, "they will not employ a grain of poison against me. The Brinvilliers[8] do not belong to this age; people now use calumny, which is much more effectual for killing people; and it is by calumny that they will work my destruction.[9] But even thus, if my death only secures the throne to my son, I shall willingly die."

One of the measures which Mirabeau strongly urged, and as to which Marie Antoinette hesitated, balancing the difficulties to which it was not unlikely to give rise against the advantages which were more obvious, was arranged without her intervention. Necker had but one panacea for all the ills of a defective constitution or an ill-regulated government-the re-establishment of the finances of the country; and, as public confidence is indispensable to national credit, the troubles of the last year had largely increased the embarrassments of the Treasury. He was also but scantily endowed with personal courage. In the denunciations of Marat he had not been spared, and by the beginning of September fear had so predominated over every other feeling in his mind that he resolved to quit a country which, as he was not one of her sons, seemed to him to have no such claim on his allegiance that he should imperil his life for her sake. But in carrying out his determination, he exhibited a strange forgetfulness, not only of the respect due to his royal master as king, but also of all the ordinary rules of propriety; for he did not resign his office into the hands of the sovereign from whom he had received it, but he announced his retirement to the Assembly, sending the president of the week a letter in which he attributed his reasons for the step partly to his health, which he described as weak, and partly to the "mortal anxieties of his wife, as virtuous as she was dear to his heart." It was hardly to be wondered at that the members present were moved rather to laughter than to sympathy by this sentimental effusion. They took no notice of the letter, and passed to the order of the day; and certainly, if it afforded evidence of his amiable disposition, it supplied proof at least equally strong of the weakness of his character, and of his consequent unfitness for any post of responsibility at such a time.

It was more to his credit that he at the same time placed in the treasury a sum of two millions of francs to cover any incorrectness which might be discovered or suspected in his accounts, and any loss which might be sustained from the depreciation of the paper money lately issued under his administration, though not with his approbation. All the rest of his colleagues retired at the same time, except the foreign secretary, M. Montmorin. They had recently been attacked with great violence in the Assembly by a combination of the most extreme democrats and the most extreme Royalists, the latter of whom accused them of having betrayed the royal authority by unworthy accessions. But, though, in the division which had taken place they had been supported by a considerable majority, they feared a repetition of the attack, and resigned their offices; in some degree undoubtedly weakening their royal master by their retirement, since those by whom he found himself compelled to replace them had still less of his confidence. Two-Duport de Tertre, Keeper of the Seals, and Duportail, Minister of War-were creatures of La Fayette, and the first mentioned was notoriously unfriendly to the queen. Two others-Lambert, the successor of Necker, and Fleurieu, the Minister of Marine-were under the influence of Barnave and the Jacobins. The only member of the new ministry who was in the least degree acceptable to Louis was M. de Lessart, the Minister of the Interior; but he, though loyal in purpose, was of too moderate talents for his appointment to add any real strength to the royal cause.

Marie Antoinette, however, paid but little attention to these ministerial changes; she disregarded them-and her view was not unsound-as but the displacement of one set of weak men by another set equally weak; and she saw, too, that the Assembly had established so complete a mastery over the Government, that even men of far greater ability and force of character would have been impotent for good. Her whole dependence was on Mirabeau; and his course at this time was so capricious and erratic that it often caused her more perplexity and alarm than pleasure or confidence. He regarded himself as having a very difficult part to play. He could not conceal from himself that he was no longer able to lead the Assembly as he had done at first, except when he was urging it along a road which it desired to take. In spite of one of his most brilliant efforts of eloquence, he had recently been defeated in an endeavor to preserve to the king the right of peace and war; and, to regain his ascendency, he more than once in the course of the autumn supported measures to which the king and queen had the greatest repugnance, and made speeches so inflammatory that even his own friend, La Marck, was indignant at his language, and expostulated with him with great earnestness. He justified himself by explaining his view[10] that no man in the country could at present bring the people back to reasonable notions; that they could only at this moment be governed by flattering their prejudices; that the king must trust to time alone; and that his own sole prospect of being of use to the crown lay in his preservation of his popularity till the favorable moment should arrive, even if, to preserve that popularity, it were necessary for him at times still to appear a supporter of revolutionary principles. It is not impossible that the motives which he thus described did really influence him; but it was not strange that Marie Antoinette should fail to appreciate such refined subtlety. She had looked forward to his taking a bold, straightforward course in defense of Royalist principles; and she could hardly believe in the honesty of a man who for any object whatever could seem to disregard or to despise them. Her feelings may be shown by some extracts from one of her letters to the emperor written just after one of Mirabeau's most violent outbursts, apparently his speech in support of a motion that the fleet should be ordered to hoist the tricolor flag.

"October 22d, 1790.

"We are again fallen back into chaos and all our old distrust. Mirabeau had sent the king some notes, a little violent in language, but well argued, on the necessity of preventing the usurpations of the Assembly ... when, on a question concerning the fleet, he delivered a speech suited only to a violent demagogue, enough to frighten all honest men. Here, again, all our hopes from that quarter are overthrown. The king is indignant, and I am in despair. He has written to one of his friends, in whom I have great confidence, a man of courage and devoted to us, an explanatory letter, which seems to me neither an explanation nor an excuse. The man is a volcano which would set an empire on fire; and we are to trust to him to put out the conflagration which is devouring us. He will have a great deal to do before we can feel confidence in him again. La Marck defends Mirabeau, and maintains that if at times he breaks away, he is still in reality faithful to the monarchy ... The king will not believe this. He was greatly irritated yesterday. La Marck says that he has no doubt that Mirabeau thought that he was acting well in speaking as he did, to throw dust in the eyes of the Assembly. and so to obtain greater credit when circumstances still more grave should arise. O my God! if we have committed faults, we have sadly expiated them.[11]"

And before the end of the year, the royal cause had fresh difficulties thrown in its way by the perverse and selfish wrongheadedness of the emigrant princes, who were already evincing an inclination to pursue objects of their own, and to disown all obedience to the king, on the plea that he was no longer master of his policy or of his actions. They showed such open disregard of his remonstrances that, in December, as Marie Antoinette told the emperor, Louis had written both to the Count d'Artois and to the King of Sardinia (in whose dominions the count was at the time), that, if his brothers persisted in their designs, "he should be compelled to disavow them peremptorily, and summon all his subjects who were still faithful to him to return to their obedience. She hoped," she said, "that that would make them pause. It seemed certain to her that no one but those on the spot, no one but themselves, could judge what moments and what circumstances were favorable for action, so as to put an end to their own miseries and to those of France. And it will be then," she concludes, "my dear brother, that I shall reckon on your friendship, and that I shall address myself to you with the confidence with which I am inspired by the feelings of your heart, which are well known to me, and by the good-will which you have shown us on all occasions.[12]"