The Life of Marie Antoinette

CHAPTER XXXIV. Death of Leopold.-Murder of Gustavus of Sweden.-Violence of Vergniaud. -The Ministers resign.-A Girondin Ministry is appointed.-Character of Dumouriez.-Origin of the Name Sans-culottes.-Union of Different Parties against the Queen.-War is declared against the Empire.-Operations in the Netherlands.-Unskillfulness of La Fayette.-The King falls into a State of Torpor.-Fresh Libels on the Queen.-Barnave's Advice.-Dumouriez has an Audience of the Queen.-Dissolution of the Constitutional Guard.- formation of a Camp near Paris.-Louis adheres to his Refusal to assent to the Decree against the Priests.-Dumouriez resigns his Office, and takes command of the Army.

War of some kind-foreign war, civil war, or both combined-had apparently become inevitable; and Marie Antoinette deceived herself if she thought that the armed congress of sovereigns, for which she was above all things anxious, could lead to any other result. In any ease, a congress must have produced one consequence which she deprecated as much as any other, a waste of time, while, as she truly said, her enemies never wasted a moment. Nor, with the very different views of the policy to be pursued, which the emperor and the King of Prussia entertained (Frederick being an advocate of an armed intervention in the affairs of France, which Leopold opposed as impracticable, and, if practicable, impolitic), was it easy to see how a congress could have brought those monarchs to agree on any united system of action. But all projects of that kind necessarily fell to the ground in consequence of the death of the emperor, which took place, after a very short illness, on the 1st of March, 1792; and before the end of the same month the royal family lost another warm friend in Gustavus of Sweden, who was assassinated in the very midst of preparations which he confidently hoped might contribute to deliver his brother sovereign from his troubles.

Marie Antoinette spoke truly when she said that the enemies of the crown never lost time. The very prospect of war increased the divisions of the Assembly, since the Jacobins were undisguisedly averse to it. Not one of their body bad any reputation for skill in arms, so that in the event of war it was evident that the chief commands, both in army and navy, must be conferred on persons unconnected with them; while the Girondins, though, as far as was yet known, equally destitute of members possessed of any military ability, looked on war as favorable to their designs, whatever might be the issue of a campaign. They were above all things eager for the destruction of the monarchy, and they reckoned that if the French army were victorious, its success would disable those who were most willing and might be most able to support the throne; while, if the enemy should prevail, it would be easy to represent their triumph as the fruit of the mismanagement, if not of the treachery, of the king's generals and ministers; and the opposition of these two parties was at this time so notorious that the queen thought it favorable to the king, since each would be eager to preserve him as a possible ally against its adversaries. It is for her husband's and her child's safety that she expresses anxiety, never for her own. With respect to herself her uniform language is that of fearlessness. She does not for a moment conceal from her correspondents her sense of the dangers which surround her. She has not only open hostility to fear, but treachery, which is far worse; and she declares that "a perpetual imprisonment in a solitary tower on the sea-shore would he a less cruel fate than that which she daily endures from the wickedness of her enemies and the weakness of her friends. Every thing menaces an inevitable catastrophe; but she is prepared for every thing. She has learned from her mother not to fear death. That may as well come to-day as to-morrow. She only fears for her dear children, and for those she loves; and high among those whom she loves she places her sister-in-law Elizabeth, who is always an angel aiding her to support her sorrows, and who, with her poor, dear children, never quits her.[1]"

A long continuance of sorrows and fears, such as had now for nearly three years pressed upon the writer of this letter, would so wear away and break down ordinary souls that, when a crisis came, they would be found wholly unequal to grapple with it; and we may therefore the better form some idea of the strength of mind and almost superhuman fortitude of this admirable queen, if, from time to time, we fix our attention on these not exaggerated complaints, for indeed the misfortunes that elicited them admit of no exaggeration; and then remember that, after so long a period of such uninterrupted suffering, her spirit was so far from being broken, that, as increasing dangers and horrors thickened around her, her courage seemed to increase also. Her faithful attendant, Madame de Campan, has remarked that her troubles had not even affected her temper; that no one ever saw her out of humor. In every respect, to the very last, she showed herself superior to the utmost malice of her enemies.

The news of the death of Leopold, whose son and successor, Francis, was but three-and-twenty years of age, gave fresh encouragement to his sister's enemies. The intelligence had hardly reached Paris when Vergniaud began to prepare the way for a fresh assault on the crown by a denunciation of the ministers, while the Jacobins and Cordeliers made an open attack upon another club which the Constitutionalists had lately formed under the name of Les Feuillants, holding its meetings in a convent of the Monks of St. Bernard,[2] and closed it by main force. Though several soldiers, and La Fayette among them, were members of the Feuillants, they made no resistance; they only applied to Petion, as mayor of the city, for protection; and that worthy magistrate refused them aid, telling them that though the law forbade them to be attacked, the voice of the people was against them, and to that voice he was bound to listen.

The ministers fell before Vergniaud, and the unhappy king had no resource but to choose their successors from the party which had triumphed over them. The absurd law by which the last Assembly had excluded its members from office was still in force, so that the orator himself and his colleagues could obtain no personal promotion; but they were able to nominate the new ministers, who, with but one exception, were all men equally devoid of ability and reputation, and therefore were the better fitted to be the tools of those to whom they owed their preferment. The names of three were Lacoste, Degraves, and Duranton, of whom nothing beyond their names is known. A fourth was Roland, who was indeed known, though not for any abilities of his own, but as the husband of the woman who, as has been already mentioned, was the first person in the whole nation to raise the cry for the murder of the king and queen, and whose fierce thirst for blood so predominated over every other feeling that a few weeks afterward she even began to urge the assassination of the only one among her husband's colleagues who was possessed of the slightest ability because his views did not altogether coincide with her own.

General Dumouriez, whom she thus honored by singling him out for her especial hatred, was an exception to his colleagues in several points. He was a man of middle age, who enjoyed a good reputation, not only for military skill, but also for diplomatic sagacity and address, earned as far back as the latter years of the preceding reign; and he was so far from being originally imbued with revolutionary principles that, when, in the summer of 1789, a mutinous spirit first appeared among the troops in Paris, he volunteered to place his services at the king's disposal, recommending measures of vigor and resolution, which, if they had been adopted, might have quelled the spirit of rebellion, and have changed the whole subsequent history of the nation. But as Necker had rejected Mirabeau a few weeks before, so he also rejected Dumouriez; and discontent at the treatment which he received from the minister, and which seemed to prove that active employment, of which he was desirous, could only be obtained through some other influence, drove the general into the ranks of the Revolutionary party. He now accepted the post of foreign secretary in the new ministry; but the connection with the enemies of the monarchy was uncongenial to his taste; and, after a short time, the frequent intercourse with Louis, which was the necessary consequence of his appointment, and the conviction of the king's perfect honesty and patriotism which this intercourse forced upon him, revived his old feelings of loyalty, and, so long as he remained in office, he honestly endeavored to avert the evils which he foresaw, and to give the advice and to support the policy by which, in his honest belief, it was alone possible for Louis to preserve his authority.

Dumouriez was a gentleman in birth and manners; but his colleagues had so little of either the habits or appearance of decent society that the attendants on the royal family gave them the name of the Sans-culottes; and this name, meant originally to describe the absence of the ordinary court dress, without which no previous ministers had ever ventured to appear in the presence of royalty, was presently adopted as a distinctive title by the whole body of the extreme revolutionists, who knew the value of a name under which to bind their followers together.[3]

The attacks on the ministry were accompanied with more direct attacks on the king and queen themselves than had ever been ventured on in the former Assembly. By this time the system of espial and treachery by which they were surrounded had become so systematic that they could not even send a messenger to their nephew, the emperor, except under a feigned name;[4] and the Baron de Breteuil, who announced his mission to Francis, reported to him at the same time that the chiefs of the Assembly were proposing to pass votes suspending the "king from his functions, and to separate the queen from him on the ground that an impeachment was to be presented against both, as having solicited the late emperor to form a confederacy among the great powers of Europe in favor of the royal prerogative." The queen was, in fact, now, as always, more the object of their hatred than her husband, and toward the end of March a reconciliation of all her enemies took place, that the attack upon her might be combined with a strength that should insure its success. The Marquis de Condorcet, a man of some eminence in philosophy, as the word had been understood since the reign of the Encyclopedists, and closely connected with the Girondins, though not formally enrolled in their party, gave a supper, at which the Duc d'Orleans formally reconciled himself to La Fayette; and both, in company with Brissot and the Abbe Sieyes, who of late had scarcely been heard of, drew up an indictment against the queen.[5] Their malignity even went the length of resolving to separate the dauphin from his mother, on the plea of providing for his education; but the means which the Girondins took to secure their triumph for the moment defeated them. La Fayette did not keep the secret. One of his friends gave information to the king of the plot that was in contemplation, and the next day the Constitutionalists mustered in the Assembly in such strength that neither Girondins nor Jacobins dared bring forward the infamous proposal.

But Louis and Marie Antoinette reasonably regarded the attack on them as only postponed, not as defeated or abandoned. They began to prepare for the worst. They burned most of their papers, and removed into the custody of friends whom they could trust those which they regarded as too valuable to destroy; and at the same time they sent notice to their partisans to cease writing to them. They could neither venture to send nor to receive letters. They believed that at this time the plan of their enemies was to terrify them into repeating their attempt to escape; an attempt of which the espial and treachery with which they were surrounded would have insured the failure, but which would have given the Jacobins a pretext for their trial and condemnation. But this scheme they could themselves defeat by remaining at their posts. Patience and courage was their only possible defense, and with those qualities they were richly endowed.

A vital difference of principle distinguished the old from the new ministry: the former had wished to preserve, the majority of the latter were resolved to destroy, the throne; and the means by which each sought to attain its end were as diametrically opposite as the ends themselves. Bertrand and De Lessart, the ministers who, in the late administration, had enjoyed most of the king and queen's confidence, had been studious to preserve peace, believing that policy to be absolutely essential for the safety of Louis himself. Because they entertained the same opinion, the new ministers were eager for war; and, unhappily Dumouriez, in spite of his desire to uphold the throne, was animated by the same feeling. His own talents and tastes were warlike, and his office enabled him to gratify them in this instance. For the conciliatory tone which De Lessart had employed toward the Imperial Government, he now substituted a language not only imperious, but menacing. Prince Kaunitz, who still presided over the administration at Vienna, attached though he was to the system of policy which he had inaugurated under Maria Teresa, could not avoid replying in a similar strain, until at last, on the 20th of April, Louis, sorely against his will, was compelled to announce to the Assembly that all his efforts for the preservation of peace had failed, and to propose an instant declaration of war.

The declaration was voted with enthusiasm; but for some time it brought nothing but disaster. The campaign was opened in the Netherlands, where the Austrians, taken by surprise, were so weak in numbers that it seemed certain that they would be driven from the country without difficulty or delay. Marshal Beaulieu, their commander-in-chief, had scarcely twenty thousand men, while the Count de Narbonne had left the French army in so good a condition that Degraves, his successor, was able to send a hundred and thirty thousand men against him; and Dumouriez furnished him with a plan for an invasion of the Netherlands, which, if properly carried out, would have made the French masters of the whole country in a few days. But the largest division of the army, to which the execution of the most important portions of the intended operations was intrusted, had been placed under the command of La Fayette, who proved equally devoid of resolution and of skill. Some of his regiments showed a disorderly and insubordinate temper. One battalion first mutinied and murdered some of its officers, and then disgraced itself by cowardice in the field. Another displayed an almost equal want of courage; and La Fayette, disheartened and perplexed, though the number of his troops still more than doubled those opposed to him, retreated into France, and remained there in a state of complete inactivity.

But, as has been said before, disaster was almost as favorable to the political views of the Girondins as success, while it added to the dangers of the sovereigns by encouraging the Jacobins, who were elated at the failure of a general so hateful to them as La Fayette. They now adopted a party emblem, a red cap; and the Duc d'Orleans and his son, the Duc de Chartres,[6] assumed it, and with studied insult paraded in it up and down the gardens of the palace, under the queen's windows; and if the two factions did not formally coalesce, they both proceeded with greater boldness than ever toward their desired object, not greatly differing as to the means by which it was to be attained.

The palace was now indeed a scene of misery. The king's apathy was degenerating into despair. At one time he was so utterly prostrated that he remained for ten days absolutely silent, never uttering a word except to name his throws when playing at backgammon with Elizabeth. At last the queen roused him from his torpor, throwing herself at his feet, and mingling caresses with her expostulations; entreating him to remember what he owed to his family, and reminding him that, if they must perish, it was better at least to perish with honor, and be king to the last, than to wait passively till assassins should come and murder them in their own rooms. She herself was in a condition in which nothing but her indomitable courage prevented her from utterly breaking down. Sleep had deserted her. By day she rarely ventured out-of-doors. Riding she had given up, and she feared to walk in the garden of the Tuileries, even in the little portion marked off for the dauphin's playground, lest she should expose herself to the coarse insults which, the basest of hirelings were ever on the watch to offer her.[7] She could not even venture to go openly to mass at Easter, but was forced to arrange for one of her chaplains to perform the service for her before daylight. Balked of their wish to offer her personal insults, her enemies redoubled their diligence in inventing and spreading libels. The demagogues of the Palais Royal revived the stories of her subservience to the interests of Austria, and even sent letters forged in her name to different members of the Assembly, inviting them to private conferences with her in the apartments of Madame de Lamballe. But she treated all such attacks with lofty disdain, and was even greatly annoyed when she learned that the chief of the police, with the king's sanction, had bought up a life of Madame La Mothe, in which that infamous woman pretended to give a true account of the affair of her necklace, and had had it burned in the manufactory of Sevres. She thought, with some reason, that to take a step which seemed to show a dread of such attacks was the surest way to encourage more of them, and that apparent indifference to them was the only line of action consistent with her innocence or with her dignity.

The increasing dangers of her position moved the pity of some who had once been her enemies, and sharpened their desire to serve her. Barnave, who probably overrated his present influence[8] in many letters pressed his advice upon her; of which the substance was that she should lay aside her distrust of the Constitutionalist party, and, with the king, throw herself wholly on the Constitution, to which the nation was profoundly attached. He even admitted that it was not without defects; but held out a hope that, with the aid of the Royalists, he and his friends might be able to amend them, and in time to re-invest the throne with all necessary splendor. And the queen was so touched by his evident earnestness that she granted him an audience, and assured him of her esteem and confidence. Barnave was partly correct in his judgment, but he overlooked one all-essential circumstance. There is no doubt that he spoke truly when he declared that the nation in general was attached to the Constitution; but he failed to give sufficient weight to the consideration that the Jacobins and Girondins were agreed in seeking to overthrow it, and that for that object they were acting with a concert and an energy to which he and his party were strangers.

Dumouriez too was equally earnest in his desire to serve the king and her, with far greater power to be useful than Barnave. He too was admitted to an audience, of which he has left us an account which, while it shows both his notions of the state of the country and of the rival parties, and also his own sincerity, is no less characteristic of the queen herself. Admitted to her presence, he found her, as he describes the interview, looking very red, walking up and down the room with impetuous strides, in an agitation which presaged a stormy discussion. The different events which had taken place since the king in the preceding autumn had ratified the Constitution, the furious language held in, and the violent measures carried by, the Assembly, had evidently changed her belief in the possibility of attempting, even for a short time, to carry on the Government under the conditions imposed by that act. She came toward him with an air which was at once majestic and yet showed irritation, and said:

"You, sir, are all-powerful at this moment; but it is only by the favor of the people, which soon breaks its idols to pieces. Your existence depends on your conduct. You are said to have great talents. You must see that neither the king nor I can endure all these novelties nor the Constitution. I tell you this frankly. Now choose your side."

To this fervid apostrophe Dumouriez replied in a tone which he intended to combine a sorrowful tenderness with loyal respect:

"Madame," said he, "I am overwhelmed with the painful confidence which your majesty has reposed in me. I will not betray it; but I am placed between the king and the nation, and I belong to my country. Permit me to represent to you that the safety of the king, of yourself, and of your august children is bound up with the Constitution, as well as is the re-establishment of the king's legitimate authority. You are both surrounded with enemies who are sacrificing you to their own interests." The unfortunate queen, shocked as well as surprised at this opposition to her views, replied, raising her voice, "That will not last; take care of yourself." "Madame," replied he, in his turn, "I am more than fifty years old. My life has been passed in countless dangers, and when I took office I reflected deeply that its responsibility was not the greatest of its perils." "This was alone wanting," cried out the queen, with an accent of indignant grief, and as if astonished herself at her own vehemence.

"This alone was wanting to calumniate me! You seem to suppose that I am capable of causing you to be assassinated!" and she burst into tears. Dumouriez was as agitated as she was. "God forbid," he replied, "that I should do you such an injustice!" And he added some flattering expressions of attachment, such as he thought calculated to soothe a mind so proud, yet so crushed. And presently she calmed herself, and came up to him, putting her hand on his arm; and he resumed: "Believe me, madame, I have no object in deceiving you; I abhor anarchy and crime as much as you do. Believe me, I have experience; I am better placed than your majesty for judging of events. This is not a short-lived popular movement, as you seem to think. It is the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses. There are great factions which fan this flame. In all factions there are many scoundrels and many madmen. In the Revolution I see nothing but the king and the entire nation. Every thing which tends to separate them tends to their mutual ruin: I am laboring as much as I can to reunite them. It is for you to help me. If I am an obstacle to your designs, and if you persist in thinking so, tell me so. and I will at once send in my resignation to the king, and will retire into a corner to grieve over the fate of my country and of you." And he concludes his narrative by expressing his belief that he had regained the queen's confidence by his frank explanation of his views, while he himself in his turn was evidently fascinated by the affability with which, after a brief further conversation, she dismissed him.[9] Though, if we may trust Madame de Campan, Marie Antoinette was not as satisfied as she had seemed to be, but declared that it was not possible for her to place confidence in his protestations when she recollected his former language and acts, and the party with which he was even now acting.

Madame de Campan probably gives a more correct report of the queen's feelings than the general himself, whom the consciousness of his own integrity of purpose very probably misled into believing that he had convinced her of it. But, though, if Marie Antoinette did listen to his professions and advice with some degree of mistrust, she undoubtedly did him less than justice: she can hardly be blamed for indulging such a feeling, when it is remembered in what an atmosphere of treachery she had lived for the last three years. Undoubtedly Dumouriez, though not a thorough-going Royalist like M. Bertrand, was not only in intention an honest and friendly counselor, but was by far the ablest adviser who had had access to her since the death of Mirabeau, and in one respect was a more judicious and trustworthy adviser than even that brilliant and fertile statesman; since he did not fall into the error of miscalculating what was practical, or of overrating his own influence with the Assembly or the nation.

Yet, had the king and queen adopted his views ever so unreservedly, it may well be doubted whether they would have averted or even deferred the fate which awaited them. The leaders of the two parties, before whose union they fell, had as little attachment to the new Constitution as the queen. The moment that they obtained the undisputed ascendency, they trampled it underfoot in every one of its provisions. Constitution or no Constitution, they were determined to overthrow the throne and to destroy those to whom it belonged; and to men animated with such a resolution it signified little what pretext might be afforded them by any actions of their destined victims. The wolf never yet wanted a plea for devouring the lamb.

One of the first fruits of the union between the Jacobins and the Girondins was the preparation of an insurrection. The Assembly did not move fast enough for them. It might be still useful as an auxiliary, but the lead in the movement the clubs assumed to themselves. Their first care was to deprive the king of all means of resistance, and with this view to get rid of the Constitutional Guard, the commander of which was still the gallant Duke de Brissac, a noble-minded and faithful adherent of Louis amidst all his distresses. But it was not easy to find any ground for disbanding a force which was too small to be formidable to any but traitors; and the pretext which was put forward was so preposterous that it could excite no feeling but that of amusement, if the object aimed at were not too serious and shocking for laughter. At Easter the dauphin had presented the mess of the regiment with a cake, one of the ornaments of which was a small white flag taken from among his own toys. Petion now issued orders to search the officers' quarters for this child's flag, and, when it was found, one of the Jacobin members was not ashamed to produce it to the Assembly as a proof that the court was meditating a counter- revolution and a massacre of the patriots, and to propose the instant dissolution of the Guard. The motion was carried, though some of the Constitutionalist party had the honesty to oppose it, as one which could have only regicide for its object; and Louis did not dare refuse it his assent.

He was now wholly disarmed. To render his defeat in the impending struggle more certain, one of the ministers, Servan, himself proposed a levy of twenty thousand fresh soldiers, to be stationed permanently at Paris, and this motion also was passed. Again Louis could not venture to withhold his sanction from the bill, though he comforted himself by dismissing the mover, with two of his colleagues, Roland and Claviere. Roland's dismissal had indeed become indispensable, since, on the preceding day, he had had the audacity to write him an insolent letter, composed by his ferocious wife, which in express terms threatened him with death "if he did not give satisfaction to the Revolution.[10]" Nor was Madame Roland inclined to be satisfied with the murder of the king and queen. As has been already mentioned, she at the same time urged upon her submissive husband the assassination of Dumouriez, who, having intelligence of her enmity, began in self-defense to connect himself with the Jacobins. On the dismissal of Roland and the others, he had exchanged the foreign port-folio for that of war, and was practically the prime minister, being in fact the only one whom Louis admitted to any degree of confidence; but this arrangement lasted less than a single week. Louis had yielded to and adopted his advice on every point but one. He had sanctioned the dismissal of the Constitutional Guard, and the formation of the new body of troops, which, no one doubted, was intended to be used against himself; but he was as firmly convinced as ever that his religious duty bound him to refuse his assent to the decree against the priests, and he refused to do a violence to his conscience, and to commit what he regarded as a sin. But this very decree was the one which Dumouriez regarded as the most dangerous one for him to reject, as being that which the Assembly was most firmly resolved to make law; and, as his most vigorous remonstrances failed to shake the king's resolution on this point, he resigned his post as a minister, and repaired to the Flemish frontier to take the command of the army, which greatly needed an able leader.