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. 

View of the Louvre when the King arrives in Paris on July 17, Escorted by a Great Number of Citizens Armed with Pikes and Guns who Accompanied Him to City Hall 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

• A bubblehead rises to the occasion

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

• The king's disastrous flight revisited: the guards' yellow liveries

• 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

*     *     *

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 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).

The favors they monopolized and the clique that surrounded them are at the root of the tragedy.

  

     Marie-Antoinette: l'inconscience guillotiné, documentary, 2022 / Internet

# # #

        

"Let them eat cake" is one of the "alternative facts" that were popularized from Palais-Royal but born at Versailles.*

  

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

Marie-Antoinette by Sophie Coppola, 2006 / zoom

They remain: "Barack Antoinette," a columnist called Obama to castigate a fête. 

     -- Maureen Dowd commenting his 60th birthday celebration in The New York Times

# # #

Reasons deeper than personal frivolity help explain the queen's behavior:

• The society the unaware teen-ager encountered appears in an art that was light, decorative and often licentious, without deeper meaning.

La Balançoire 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 fundamentally 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, "Arrangez tout cela comme vous l'entendrez : mais ne croyez pas qu'une reine, née archiduchesse d'Autriche, y apporte l'intérêt et l'attention qu'y donnait une princesse  polonaise,* devenue reine de 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. 

# # #

Marie-Antoinette's obliviousness 

is a major 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)

*     *     *

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.

The March at Passy, a famous print estampe  (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." 

Summary: 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 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

Several hundred men dressed as women are said to have joined them.

• On receiving a delegation of women the king agreed to send grain to Paris and to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. He 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: 

"Brigands Massacre a Guard at the Queen's Apartment," print by Jean-François 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 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."

 

• 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, the heads of the slaughtered guards carried on pikes ahead of it. The court followed in a hundred coaches: 

     Zoom

La Fuite de Louis XVI by Viktor Lazarevski, 2013 (in French) / 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...

-- This detail and those above, Madame Campan

• 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 by Jacques François Joseph 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 (Paris's historical museum)

skips this drama. 

*    *    *

Next,

"Bonjour Sire!," the greeting that announces calamity

"BONJOUR SIRE!," THE GREETING THAT ANNOUNCES CALAMITY

TENSIONS RISE. THE KING LEAVES SECRETLY FOR THE FRONTIER. HE IS STOPPED AND FORCED BACK TO PARIS

(JUNE 20-24, 1791) 

-- Main texts: Michelet's The Flight to Varennes in "Histoire de la Revolution française" / 

Mémoires de 

Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel,

 governess of the royal children, ed. 1986 / When the King Took Flight by Timothy Tackett, 2003.

A televised popularization: The Varennes episode in The Rest is History, YouTube, based on Tackett. 

Louis's failed "Flight to Varennes" (the insignificant border town where he is stopped) destroyed the aura of the 1500-year-old monarchy and so is thought as important as taking the Bastille. 

"A galloping horseman rides up behind them, cries, 'On the order of the Nation, postilion, stop! You are driving the king!' All remain stupefied."

-- Michelet, p.163 

You can still follow the route...

  Zoom

Varennes itself was devastated by World War I. A panel on the police station on the site of  the grocery store where the king and his entourage were forced to spend the night is all that recalls the drama.  

Bondy: Where the royals joined chambermaids and baggage, and exchanged the ordinary vehicle with which they slipped out of Paris for the spectacular coach that the next page describes.

Chalons: Where after a brief respite a mob interrupts mass and forces the frightful return to continue.

Sainte-Menehould: The relay for changing horses whose owner recognized the king. 

Montmédy: Louis's destination, a citadel on the border with Austria (now Belgium) beyond which the royalist forces were massed.

# # #

The story

• The trip is put off several times, the last to coincide with the day off of a servant thought to be a spy.* 

*« Placed near the queen at the time of her marriage, Her Majesty, accustomed to her, liked her skill and intelligence. She was treated in a way better than should have been that of a woman of her class. » (Bold added: the remark may explain the servant's animosity at a time when commoners vehemently demanded equality).

-- Madame Campan, p. 340

 

• The result: Hundreds of royalist troops sent from the frontier to escort the king stay in the region much longer than the few hours planned. The population does not believe the explanation that they are meant protect a convoy of funds to pay soldiers' salaries, and fear that they have come to collect unpaid feudal dues or are a prelude to invasion.

• The king disguises himself as "Monsieur Durand," a name as familiar in France as "Mr. Jones" in English. He poses as the accountant of a baroness whom the Dauphin's governess impersonates. 

The photos on this page and the next are from  L'Évasion de Louis XVI , a television movie by Viktor Lazarevski, 2013.

Marie-Antoinette assumes the role of her maid. The little Dauphin is dressed as a girl, and the 13-year-old princess as a commoner.

• Without trying to hide his identity, Louis has a guard distribute largesse: 

"Look! I've been given a gold louis!" 

 "A louis for giving directions? That's impossible!"

Legend has him recognized by his profile on the new paper money (the movie substitutes a coin). But Louis's daughter will say that many people recognize him and in fact, Jean Drouet had seen him many times when a dragoon in Versailles. But legends use shortcuts to summarize events.

• Delays in leaving Paris and the weight of the coach mean that the fugitives arrive three hours late for the meeting with the escort. Alarmed by the unrest that the troops' presence causes and supposing that the trip has been put off again, the commander orders its departure half an hour before the royals appear. 

• The travellers find that the men have dismounted and that many are fraternizing with locals in the taverns. They go on alone.

• Jean Drouet, who owns the relay at Sainte-Menehould, recognizes Louis while changing the horses. A vehement Jacobin, he persuades the notables to let him stop the king. He and a friend take shortcuts to reach Varenne a few minutes after the royals.

• At 23:00 everyone sleeps, except for a half-dozen men who drink in a tavern. At Drouet's passionate demand they barricade the route. The unarmed guards do not stop them.

Zoom

• The mayor is the area's deputy to Paris, and the grocer who replaces him suggests that the travellers stay in the rooms over his shop until morning. With no other choice, they accept.

Marie-Antoinette enters a dwelling that is not a palace or prison for the only time in her life.

# # #

"Bonjour Sire!" When a resident who has been to Versailles  confirms the stranger's identity, Louis admits that he is the king:

"That 'Bonjour Sire !' was for Louis XVI, for Marie-Antoinette and for Madame Elisabeth [Louis's sister] the guillotine, for the dauphin the agony of the Temple; for Madame Royale, the extinction of her race and exile." 

-- Victor Hugo, cited in the Memoirs of  Madame de Tourzel, note 3, p. 199.

• Drouet has the church bell toll. "The bells in the village churches took up the call. The whole shadowy countryside was in commotion; from the steeple one could see lights that sought each other, came together; a great storm was forming; a mass of armed men, full of agitation, of trouble."

--  Michelet, p.166

• Masses come with drum rolls, banners, pikes and guns. Two representatives from the government arrive, with a letter that confirms the flight of the king and an order to keep him from going farther. The population demands that he be taken back to Paris.

• Louis tries to delay the departure, hoping that the royalist troops on the border 25 miles away will free him. The commander fears the turmoil of the countryside and can be sure only of the German mercenaries. They arrive in Varennes after the king has gone, and see the cloud of dust left by the crowd.

"Barricades on the route. They find a ford, pass it. Then it's a canal. They try to pass it. [...] The Germans say that their horses are exhausted. [They hear that] the Verdun garrison is coming after them in full force."

-- Michelet, p.171. 

They leave.

• The royals are forced to return to Paris. Local guards surround them and  thousands of people relay each other around the coach, for four days. 

  Le Peuple en armes by Jean-Baptiste Lesueur / zoom

• The royals spend a third night without sleep, swelter in the June heat and choke under the clouds of dust the crowds stir up. At every burg they are obliged to hear the mayors' harangues lifted from Paris newspapers.

The guards, perched on top of the vehicles, endure the jeers and threats of the crowds.

• At Chalons, a town with little commercial production and so without radical workers, notables receive the royals ceremoniously. On the fourth night since leaving Paris, they sleep at last.

• The respite is short-lived: Crowds from elsewhere stop a mass. A count arrives on horseback wearing the Cross of Saint Louis, cries "Long live the king!"and is massacred. His head and hat are brandished on pikes.  

 

• Three emissaries from the National Assembly arrive to preserve order. The coach can advance only step by step and as it approaches Paris, crowds are even more hostile.

# # #

The procession enters town by the wealthy west, circling the city to avoid the radicalized, underclass east:

Le Retour de Varennes le 25 juin, 1791, by Jean Duplessis Bertaux / zoom

Posters forbid demonstrations.Tens of thousands line the streets in silence to watch the king pass by...

• But when Jean Drouet* appears at the head of the cortege applause breaks out.

*His life:

• As delegate to the radical government elected a year later, he votes the death of the king. 
• He fights against Austria, is captured and is among the prisoners exchanged for Louis's young daughter.
• He becomes sub-prefect of Sainte-Menehould.
• Napoleon decorates him, saying "You have changed the face of the world." 
• Restoration authorities pursue him and he ends his life in hiding.

-- Wikipedia

• At place de la Concorde the cortège passes in front of the royal statue: Michelet says a veil has been placed over its eyes, to symbolize the blindness of the monarchy.

          Retour du Roi et de sa famille après la fuite à Varennes, unidentified print / zoom 

• Men do not remove their hats.

Retour de la famille royale à Paris le 25 juin  1791, anonyme / zoom

The entrance to the Tuileries palace, the royals' destination, is on the right.

The ecclesiastic is an exception: half the clergy do not accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (that placed the government over the Pope) and was often counter-revolutionary. 

The royals are allowed into the Tuileries palace, but only the National Guard's protection guards saves the guards from massacre.

Marie-Antoinette looks in a mirror and sees that her blond hair has turned white.

# # #

The deputies are prosperous people, since only tax-paying proprietors can vote. For them the king is a bulwark against the street, and for a little over a year the royals live much as before — except for the surveillance.*

*A guard is posted at the queen's open door as she sleeps, the curtains around the bed providing a screen. The door is closed only when she dresses.

A corridor between the rooms of the king and queen is watched 24 hours a day, to keep them from communicating. An actor from the Comédie française tries to be made guard often, to let them have brief conversations.

-- Madame Campan, pp. 347-348

# # #

"What! The king flees! The king joins the enemy! He betrays the nation!  

A father hands over his children! Our peasants of France did not yet have a political notion other than that of paternal rule; it was less the revolutionary idea that infuriated them than the awful, impious thought that a father would cede his offspring, betray their confidence! »

-- Michelet, p. 166

The monarchy never recovers.

A constitutional monarchy would have protected France 

in the time of fear and chaos.

The king's betrayal ended that authority.

*     *     *

Next,

The king's disastrous flight revisited:

The guards' yellow liveries