LITMIR.BIZ

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He found support in other prominent republicans such as the barrister Georges Danton, leader of the extremist Cordeliers Club.

      Those opposed to the monarchy could turn to militant journalists such as Camille Desmoulins and Jacques-René Hébert to whip up public opinion in their favour. Hébert was a zealot for the cause, and with killing cruelty, week after week in his journal, Le Père Duchesne, he stirred up loathing of the royal tyrants. They were dehumanised and turned into hate objects. The king, for so long the ‘royal cuckold’ or ‘fat pig’, was now ‘the Royal Veto’: an animal ‘about five feet, five inches long … as timid as a mouse and as stupid as an ostrich … who eats, or rather, sloppily devours, anything one throws at him’. Whereas the ‘Female Royal Veto’ was ‘a monster found in Vienna … lanky, hideous, frightful … who eats France’s money in the hope of one day devouring the French, one by one’. Marie-Thérèse was ‘designed like the spiders of the French Cape, to suck the blood of slaves’. As for ‘the Delphinus … whose son is he?’ The endless stream of vituperation soaked into the consciousness of Parisians. It became easy to see the royal family as the terrible Machiavellian enemy gorged from preying on innocent French people.

      The queen, drawing on all the strength of her character, was indeed now playing a formidable, duplicitous role. Determined to save the throne, that autumn she charmed the moderates in the Assembly with her apparent support for the constitution, while she was in fact in secret correspondence with foreign courts and her devoted Fersen. Count Fersen had escaped to Brussels where he joined the king’s brother, Provence, and was devastated to hear of the royal family’s recapture at Varennes. ‘Put your mind at rest; we are alive … I exist,’ the queen reassured him as she adapted to life closely surrounded by spies and enemies; even when she went to see her own son, an army of guards would follow her. Her only hope, she said, ‘is that my son at least can be happy … When I am very sad, I take my little boy in my arms, I kiss him with all my heart and this consoles me for a time’.

      While Marie-Antoinette was writing in code to her brother, the Emperor Leopold, asking him to support the French monarchy, Fersen went on a desperate diplomatic tour of European capitals. In February 1792 he risked his life in a daring mission to return to France in disguise to see the queen in the Tuileries. Despite their efforts, in March the Austrian Emperor Leopold II died suddenly, to be replaced by Marie-Antoinette’s nephew, Francis II. Marie-Antoinette could not be sure that the Emperor Francis would intervene on her behalf and feared betrayal.

      By spring 1792 the new powers in France were growing increasingly militaristic, convinced that neighbouring countries would be forced to act against their own populations’ possible political awakening. Rumours were rife of an immediate attack against France by an alliance of Austrians and Prussians, supported by émigré forces. Soon there were calls upon all patriots to defend their country as the warmongering verged on hysteria. In April, France declared war on Austria. Marie-Antoinette’s position became intolerable. Many people were convinced that l’Autrichienne who wished to ‘bathe in the blood of French people’ was an enemy agent, betraying the nation. When the French offensive in the Netherlands went badly, fears mounted that the Austrians and Prussians would march on Paris and restore the ‘royal tyrants’.

      Despite the pressures of war the Assembly continued to persecute the clergy. Any priest still loyal to Rome denounced by more than twenty citizens was to be deported to the French colony of Guiana, a fate which was certain death, since leprosy and malaria were endemic in the colony. This decree was sent to the king for his approval. After much heart searching and anguish, he again used his veto and refused to sign this decree.

      The very next day, 20 June 1792, thousands of citizens, angered by the king’s use of his veto, gathered around the palace. ‘This armed procession began to file before our windows, and no idea can be formed of the insults they said to us,’ wrote Marie-Thérèse. ‘On their banners was written “Tremble Tyrant; the people have risen”, and we could also hear cries of “Down with the Veto!” And other horrors!’ Thirteen-year-old Marie-Thérèse witnessed what happened next. ‘Suddenly we saw the populace forcing the gates of the courtyard and rushing to the staircase of the château. It was a horrible sight to see and impossible to describe – that of these people with fury in their faces, armed with pikes and sabres, and pell-mell with them women half unclothed, resembling Furies.’ In all the turmoil, Marie-Antoinette tried to follow the king but was prevented. ‘Save my son!’ she cried out. Immediately someone carried Louis-Charles away and she was unable to follow. ‘Her courage almost deserted her, when at last, entering my brother’s room she could not find him,’ wrote Marie-Thérèse.

      Meanwhile, the crowd surged upstairs armed with muskets, sabres and pikes. Madame de Tourzel describes the ordeal. ‘The king, seeing that the doors were going to be forced open, wanted to go out to meet the factionists and try to control them with his presence.’ There was no time. The doors to the king’s rooms were axed down in seconds and the crowd burst in, shouting ‘The Austrian, where is she? Her head! Her head!’ Elisabeth stood valiantly by her brother, and Madame de Tourzel describes her great bravery as she was mistaken for the queen. ‘She said to those around her, these sublime words: “Don’t disillusion them. If they take me for the queen, there may be time to save her.”’

      The revolutionaries turned on the king and demanded that he sign the decrees of the Assembly. For over two hours, Louis tried to reason with them. He pointed out that he had acted in accordance with the constitution and that in all conscience he believed his actions were right. At the insistence of the crowd, to prove his loyalty to the revolution, he wore a bonnet rouge, the symbol of liberty, and toasted the health of the nation. After some hours, it became clear that the king would not yield.

      Meanwhile, Marie-Antoinette, finally reunited with both her son and daughter, was forced to flee from the Dauphin’s rooms as they could hear doors to the antechambers being hacked down. Accompanied by a few loyal allies, Princesse de Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel, they tried to escape to the king’s bedroom, without success. Clinging to her children, she took refuge in the Council Chamber. Trapped behind a table before the hostile crowds, they were protected by just a few guards. For two hours they endured taunts and jeers as the angry hordes paraded past, some bearing ‘symbols of the most unspeakable barbarity’, wrote Madame Campan. There was a model gallows, ‘to which a dirty doll was suspended bearing the words “Marie-Antoinette à la lanterne”’, to represent her hanging. There were model guillotines and a ‘board to which a bullock’s heart was fastened’, labelled ‘Heart of Louis XVI’. The seven-year-old Dauphin, who was ‘shrouded in an enormous red cap’, was crying.

      After several hours, the mayor of Paris, Jérôme Pétion, arrived and dispersed the mob, pretending ‘to be much astonished at the danger the king had faced’, observed Marie-Thérèse. Traumatised, the royal family were finally reunited. Louis-Charles was so shocked by the day’s events that his usual sunny personality was stunned into complete silence as he clung to his parents in great relief. As for Marie-Thérèse, the endless succession of traumatic ordeals was rapidly undermining her. Already by nature ‘Madame Sérieuse’, she was losing ‘all the joy of childhood’, observed Madame de Tourzel’s daughter, Pauline, and she would lapse into deep and gloomy silences like her father.

      For the next few days, the king’s bravery caused a popular swing in his favour. Nevertheless, behind the scenes the political landscape was changing fast. Robespierre, voted vice-president of the Jacobin Club in July, with well-argued, cold cunning, dedicated himself to the idea that democracy could only be established with the overthrow of the monarchy – and also the constitution and Legislative Assembly that recognised the role of the king. Together with radicals drawn from the Cordeliers Club, such as Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat and Jacques-René Hébert, they played on people’s terror of a foreign invasion. The king and queen in the Tuileries were portrayed as being at the scheming centre of interests that wanted to destroy France. When the Prussians entered the war, promising ‘vengeance’ if the king and queen were harmed, collusion seemed only too likely. While moderates like Lafayette left the capital, National Guards from the provinces poured into Paris. The highlight came on 30 July, when five hundred National Guards from Marseilles, recruited for their radicalism by their local Jacobin

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