4.1.5. THE CURTAIN FALLS

MENU: 4.1.5. The curtain falls

ECONOMIC GROWTH MEANT THAT "THE BARRIERS TO CAPITALISM HAD TO BE BROKEN. THEY WERE BROKEN" 

-- Karl Marx on the French Revolution 

-- Main source here: History of the French Revolution by Jules Michelet, 1847,

 dir. Pierre Gaxotte, abridged ed. (in French), 1971

The transformation was inevitable, the fall of the monarchy was not: The queen breaking the codes and the king affirming them, explain its end. 

Le Louvre, quai de l'Ecole au moment de l'arrivée du roi Louis XVI à Paris le 17 juillet 1789 ("View of the Louvre when the King arrives in Paris on July 17") by Jean-Pierre Houêl, 1789 / zoom

Louis XVI is welcomed with immense enthusiasm when he comes to Paris a few days after the fall of the Bastille, because his visit is taken to show that he agrees.

The end of a king and queen

and what came next

• Marie-Antoinette breaks rules that she does not understand

• "Let them eat cake"

• Reasons beyond frivolity explain the queen's behavior

• A bubblehead rises to the occasion

• "Bonjour Sire!," the greeting that announces calamity

• The debacle revisited: bright yellow liveries and other puzzles

• The end of the 1500-year-old monarchy

• The "Temple," a prison that could have been worse

• "I have no tears left to cry"

• Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur

• Louis XVII, a story that has no end

• The Obelisk announces a new era

• How France became a republic

• French Presidents, heirs of kings

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Next,

Marie-Antoinette breaks rules that she does not understand

MARIE-ANTOINETTE BREAKS RULES THAT SHE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND

"I WILL ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF A PRIVATE LIFE, WHICH DOES NOT EXIST FOR US [ROYALS] IF WE DO NOT HAVE THE GOOD SENSE TO ASSURE IT" 

-- Marie-Antoinette cited by Madame Campon

"I recall all the charm of the queen's illusion, of which she could grasp neither the impossibility nor the danger."

-- Madame Campan, her first chambermaid 

            Le Hameau, petit Trianon by Claude-Louis Châtelet, 1786 / zoom

The fairy-tale farm where Marie-Antoinette would slip away with her clique

The memoir vividly describes the clans, gossip and intrigues of the late 18th-century court, and explains how the unaware young consort took the path that brought disaster. 

A passage at the start of her memoir

"People sincerely attached to the queen have always regarded as one of her first misfortunes, perhaps even the greatest one [...] to have not met in the person naturally placed to be her counsel, someone who was indulgent, enlightened [...] who would have made the young [Austrian] princess understand that in France her dignity depended a great deal on custom [...] and especially that an imposing entourage would protect her against the mortal stings of calumny."

-- Memoir of Madame Campan, 1988 ed., pp. 46-47, slightly adapted

# # #

The unaware young girl, who was not even 15 when she married to the future king, was used to the relatively free and simple Austrian court. Her resistance to the intricate etiquette of Versailles gave the faction that resisted that alliance a weapon... 

Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, age 12, 1767-1768 / zoom

A queen's sole obligation was to give children to France. Otherwise her role was only ceremonial. By becoming a fashion icon Marie-Antoinette highlighted Paris as a center of style, but defied the obligation to remain in the shadows:

Zoom

Worse, since Louis XVI had no intimate best friend, she inadvertently took on the role of favori(te), the person closest to the king. Such figures were official, detested — and almost indispensable:

 

 

Diane de Poitiers, c.1550; Leonora Galigai, c.1615; Marquis de Cinq-Mars, c.1640;

Marquise de Montespan, c.1670; Marquise de Pompadour, c.1640; Countess du Barry, c.1770

• Favoris shared kings' gifts of lands, posts, honors etc. with their clans, which gave them temporary access to power without the risk of rebellion.

• The institution evolved: Louis XIV's much stronger monarchy made revolt impossible and Louis XV's favorites of commoner origin (Jeanne Poisson ennobled as the Marquise de Pompadour and Jeanne Bécu ennobled as the Countess du Barry) had no traditional entourage to favor.

But clans were improvised around or against them, encouraging the intrigues and struggles for influence that made the exorbitant expense of life at a stifling court worthwhile.

Favoris were also lightning rods whose extravagance concentrated popular fury on themselves and away from the ruler, who was thought fatherly but misled.

# # #

As well, favoring a few friends in a hierarchical court where

proximity to royals was a badge of identity and source of posts, gifts and honors brought powerful enemies.* 

*Louis XV had already broken the rules when his favorite, the Marquise de Pompadour, organized and starred in plays to which only a few were invited. The innovation was cancelled on the pretext of cost, but really because of excluded courtiers' hostility.

-- La Reine et la favorite ("The Queen and the Favorite") by Simone Bertière, 2000, pp. 347-354

The two women who succeeded each other as the queen's best friend were disinterested...

Princess of Lamballe / zoom                                                      Countess de Polignac / zoom: 

                                                         An ancestress of the royal family of Monaco

Madame Campan wrote of the Countess of Polignac, "I always thought her sincere attachment to the queen, as well as her taste for simplicity, let her avoid all that suggested a favorite's wealth. She had none of the faults that almost always accompany that title." 

-- Madame Campan, p.100.

The Princesse de Lamballe returned from England to be near the queen as clouds darkened, and was massacred for it (please read on).

But their clans monopolized favors.

The left-out courtiers became enemies. 

It was they who invented the scurrilous tracts*

that were sent throughout the kingdom from Palais-Royal.

*The pornographic La Vie de Marie-Antoinette can be read online.

        

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Next,

"Let them eat cake"

"LET THEM EAT CAKE..."

PALAIS-ROYAL REVOLUTIONARIES USED THE PHRASE OF LOUIS XVI'S AUNTS TO ATTACK MARIE-ANTOINETTE

It has entered American culture.

  

Marie-Antoinette by Sophie Coppola, 2006 / zoom

"Barack Antoinette," a columnist called Obama* to castigate a fête.

*Maureen Dowd commenting his 60th birthday celebration in The New York Times (in 2021).

TRUMP "MARIE-ANTOINETTE" SAYS, "NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!"*

*The press office of California's governor 

  

Marie-Antoinette avec la rose by Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, zoom  /  Facebook

Zoom  (please scroll down)

When Trump gave an extravagant celebration for billionaires while cancelling food relief for the poor...

# # #

But...

"No Kings" demonstration in Paris, Oct 25, 2025.

"At least Marie-Antoinette had Style!

 "Versailles at discount" 

is said of his gold decor.

-- The Meidas Touch podcast

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Next,

Reasons beyond frivolity explain the queen's behavior

REASONS BEYOND FRIVOLITY EXPLAIN THE QUEEN'S BEHAVIOR

THE SOCIETY THE TEEN-AGED QUEEN ENCOUNTERED APPEARS IN AN ART THAT WAS LIGHT, DECORATIVE AND OFTEN LICENTIOUS, WITHOUT DEEPER MEANING

That ambiance facilitated her obliviousness.

La Balançoire ("The Swing") by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767-1768 / zoom

An elderly gentleman (husband?) pushes the swing of a flirtatious young woman as an enraptured suitor admires her legs and cupids hug.

• Courtiers pretended to honor her, as when the hostile brother of the king (the future Louis XVIII) gave a fête in which 50 cavaliers on superb white or black horses engaged in mock combat in her honor. 

-- Madame Campan, p.110

• She did not need the trappings of etiquette to buttress her status: On hierarchical details of coiffures she said, "Fix all that as you want to: but don't think that a queen, born an archduchess of Austria, will give it the support and interest of a Polish princess,* become queen of France."

-- Madame Campan, p.372

*Marie Leczinska, queen under Louis XV, had insisted on etiquette to buttress her inferior origins: her father was a dethroned king of Poland, a country under foreign powers' sway. 

# # #

That was a reason for the monarchy's end 

"Without her Parisiens would probably have kept their love for the King [after the flight to Varennes, below]. They liked the plump man who was not at all mean, and who in his portliness had an air that was kindly and paternal, very much to the liking of the crowd. [...] The market women called him bon papa; that was how the people saw him."

-- Michelet, p.77 (slightly adapted)

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Next,

A bubblehead rises to the occasion

A BUBBLEHEAD RISES TO THE OCCASION

HER COURAGE WHEN FACED WITH A CROWD WANTING TO KILL HER CONTRADICTS HER FRIVOLOUIS IMAGE  

-- Pages based on Histoire de la Révolution française, the classic by Jules Michelet (1853). 

On October 5, 1789 7-8,000 women seize arms at City Hall and march on Versailles, to demand grain and bring the king back to Paris.

Fuite de Passy à Versailles ("The flight from Passy to Versailles"), a famous print (Passy is a wealthy suburb on the route to Versailles) / zoom

Militants threaten to cut the hair of women who do not join them.

"The certain cause, for the women, for the crowd of the most miserable, was hunger. Having made a rider dismount, they killed the horse and ate it almost raw.

Would the men have marched on Versailles if the women had not preceded them? Probably not. No one had had the idea of going to find the king."

Michelet on the women's engagement:

"Great misery is fierce, it strikes the most feeble." 

Women were more exposed to hunger than men because more isolated, with children who cried and died, or seamstresses who worked alone (he does not mention washerwomen, whose work was sociable). Not all militants, he adds, were hungry, such as market-women and prostitutes, but misery surrounded them. 

Bring the king back to Paris:

"The King must live with his people, feel and share the suffering [...] If Kingship be not tyranny, there must be a mariage, a community [...] Is it not strange and unnatural, enough to dry the heart of kings, to keep them in selfish solitude, with an artificial crowd of golden beggars, to make them forget the people? How be surprised that such kings become hard and barbarous strangers?" 

# # #

The march was much tougher than the famous picture and this movie shows. It was a cold, rainy October day and the crowd walked in mud. 

• One woman seized a drum from guards and beat as they advanced through the streets. Others joined them:

These photos and the next come from La Révolution française by Robert Enrico, 1989

The child is imaginary but the drumbeat's stirring call was real. 

 

• Thousands of women arrived at Versailles toward 16h. The National Guard led by Lafayette* and a crowd of men joined them a few hours later.   

*Americans' only foreign hero was active in both revolutions.

Internet, no source named

• The king received a delegation of women. He agreed to send grain to Paris and to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and said he would think about coming to Paris.

• The throng camped out in the palace's huge courtyard:

Lafayette, who was responsible for the king's safety, thought all was well, went to sleep and woke up only after the mob had stormed the palace: He would be called "General Morpheus."

# # #

At dawn on October 6, people broke through the gates and sought to kill the queen:

• Chambermaids locked the door and helped Marie-Antoinette throw on a dress:

  

Here and below, Marie-Antoinette by Jean Delannoy with Michèle Morgan, 1956

They took a secret passage that led to the king's room, but he had left to look for them. They rushed through the palace to find him. A locked door added to the panic: It was five minutes before a servant heard the terrified pounding.

• Two guards who tried to protect the queen were killed: 

"Massacre of a Guard at the Queen's Apartment, by brigands" print by J-F Janinent / zoom

• The queen and the chambermaids finally found the king, the children, their governess and Lafayette, in the salon that looks out on the courtyard:

Le General La Fayette met en garde le Roi et la Reine ("General La Fayette warns the King and Queen") by Jean-Frédéric Shall, before 1825, zoom 

  

• Louis refused to let his troops fire on the crowd and tried to talk to it... 

But it demanded the queen.  When she came out on the balcony with the children the mob screamed, "No children!" 

After the terrifying awakening and the frantic rush through the palace, Marie-Antoinette calmly faced the throng that had wished to kill her:

# # #

The king was forced to settle in Paris, asking only that his family come too. "The royal coach, La Fayette riding alongside it, advanced like a hearse."

-- Michelet. The account below comes from the memoir of Madame Campon, whose sister was present.

 

• His carriage led the march, to drumbeats and the shooting of muskets. The mob was so close to the coach that it swayed from side to side, carrying the heads of the slaughtered guards on pikes ahead of it. The court followed in a hundred coaches: 

  Zoom

La Fuite de Louis XVI by Viktor Lazarevski, 2013 / Youtube

"In the midst of that troop of cannibals rose up the two heads of the massacred guards. The monsters, who had made trophies of them, had the atrocious idea of forcing a wig-maker to re-style their coiffures by powdering their bloodied heads...

• Parisians celebrated the arrival of bags of grain and the royal family by dancing in the streets:

Louis XVI entre à Paris, le 6 octobre 1789 ("Louis XVI enters Paris, October 6 1789") by J.F.J. Swebach, 1789 / zoom

# # #

If you visit the château of Versailles you will cross through the courtyard and pass under the balcony:

Odyssey traveller

Think of the mob, the massacred guards and the courage of Marie-Antoinette.

# # #

The musée Carnavalet (the historical museum)

erases most of the Revolution's violence,

and skips this drama. 

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Next,

"Bonjour Sire!," the greeting that announces calamity