III.1.5. THE CURTAIN FALLS

MENU: 3.1.5. 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 by breaking the codes and the king by 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.

In brief

• The queen 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 puzzle of the guards' yellow vests

• 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,

The queen breaks rules that she does not understand

THE QUEEN 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

"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 

         The Hamlet 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 Louis XVI's 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. 52- 53, slightly adapted

# # #

Marie-Antoinette was not even 15 when she married the future king...

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

She refused to follow Court codes, notably that aside from the obligation to give children to France their role was only ceremonial. hey were not explained to her, or if they were she did not listen. By becoming a fashion icon she highlighted Paris as a center of style, but defied the obligation to remain in the shadows:

Memories of Léonard, Coiffeur of the Queen Marie-Antoinette / YouTube (in French), zoom and scroll down

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* 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 rapidly cancelled on the pretext of cost, but really because of excluded courtiers' hostility.

-- The Queen and the Favorite by Simone Bertière, 2000, pp. 347-354 (in French)

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." 

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

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

  

     Marie-Antoinette: Thoughtlessness Guillotined, 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

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

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

# # #

Marie-Antoinette's obliviousness 

is a major reason for that 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  

-- Michelet, an ardent republican, does not say so, but it is what his narrative implies: pp. 51-59.

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: They 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 join them:

These photos and the next come from "The French Revolution by Robert Enrico, 1989

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

• Thousands of women arrive at Versailles toward 16h. The National Guard led by Lafayette* and a crowd of men join 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.

• The crowd arrives around 4 pm. The king receives a delegation of women and agrees to send grain to Paris and to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. He says he will think about coming to Paris.

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

Lafayette, who is responsible for the king's safety, thinks all is well, goes to sleep and wakes up only after the mob has stormed the palace: He will be called "General Morpheus."

# # #

At dawn on October 6, people break through the gates and seek the queen to kill her:

• Chambermaids lock the door and help Marie-Antoinette throw on a dress:

  

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

They take a secret passage that leads to the king's room, but he has left to look for them. They rush through the palace to find him. A locked door adds to the panic: It is five minutes before a servant hears the terrified pounding.

• Two guards who try to protect the queen are killed: 

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

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

     General La Fayette Advises the King and Queen on October 6, 1789 by Jean-Frédéric Shall, before 1825, zoom  

• Louis refuses to let his troops fire on the crowd and tries to talk to it... 

But it demands to see the queen who comes out on the balcony with the children. The mob screams, "No children!" 

 

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

# # #

The king is 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 leads the march, surrounded by people carrying the heads of the murdered guards on pikes. The court follows in a hundred coaches: 

     Zoom

The Escape of 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...

-- Madame Campan

• Parisians dance in the streets to celebrate the arrival of bags of grain and the royal family:

Louis XVI enters Paris, October 6, 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, of the massacred guards

and of the courage of Marie-Antoinette.

*    *    *

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 "History of the French Revolution" and 

Mémoires de 

Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel,

 governess of the royal children, ed. 1986, with notes (in French). 

A televised popularization: The Varennes episode in The Rest is History, YouTube:

Louis's "Flight to Varennes" (the insignificant town where he is stopped) destroyed the aura of monarchy. It is considered 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. The bodyguards had no firearms... The story of the tragic moment when the King was arrested was and always will be imperfectly known.

-- Michelet p.163

You can still follow the route...

  Zoom

Varennes itself was devastated by the two world wars. Only a panel on the police station that occupies the grocery store where the king and his entourage were harbored recalls the drama.  

Bondy: The suburban town where the royals join chambermaids and baggage, and exchange the ordinary vehicle with which they leave Paris for the spectacular coach that the next page describes.

Chalons: The last relay to which horses could gallop from Paris without being changed and the town where the the royals found a respite on the frightful return, where the crowd murdered a royalist and where members of the government arrived to impose order. 

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

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

# # #

The story

• The trip is put off several times, the last for 24 hours 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.) 

-- Madame Campan, p. 340

 

• That change means that royalist troops from the frontier remain in the region much longer than the few hours originally planned, frightening the population. Have they come to collect feudal dues to landowners that have not been paid? Do they announce an invasion? 

--When the King took Flight by Timothy Tackett, 2004

• The king disguises himself as "Monsieur Durand," the accountant of a baroness whom the Dauphin's governess impersonates. 

The Evasion of Louis XVI by Viktor Lazarevski, 2013, source of the movie photos on this page and the next. 

Louis XVI practices bowing as "Monsieur Durand," a name as ordinary as "Mr. Smith" in a film for French television. 

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!"

In reality the king is recognized by his profile printed on new paper money.   

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

• The worried travellers go on to the next stop. There they find that the men have dismounted and and that many are in the taverns, where they drink and fraternize with the locals. The group goes on alone.

• Jean Drouet, who owns the relay at Sainte-Menehould, recognizes Louis while changing the horses. An ardent revolutionary, he persuades the notables that the travellers are the royal family. They let him gallop off to have them halted.

He arrives at Varennes minutes after the travellers.

• At 23:00 everyone sleeps, except for a half-dozen Jacobins who drink in a tavern. At Drouet's passionate demand they barricade the route. The guards do not stop them (the next page says more). 

Zoom

• The mayor is in Paris. The grocer who replaces him does not know what to do, and to let the situation evolve suggests that the travellers stay in the rooms over his shop until morning. Having no 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 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. Other churches take up the call. "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, met; a great storm was forming; a mass of armed men, full of agitation, of trouble."

--  Michelet, p.166

• Masses arrive 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.

• In the morning the king 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 German mercenaries. They arrive in Varennes 20 minutes after the king has left, 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 start saying that their horses are exhausted. [They hear that] the Verdun garrison is coming after them in full force."

They leave.

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

   The People in Arms 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 listen to the mayors' harangues lifted from Paris newspapers.

• 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 come from elsewhere stop a mass. A count arrives on horseback wearing the Cross of Saint Louis and to show the monarch that people remain loyal to him, cries "Long live the king!" He 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 increasingly hostile.

# # #

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

The Return from Varennes on June 25, 1791, 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. 
• When fighting in the war against Austria he is captured, and is among the prisoners exchanged for the king's young daughter.
• He becomes sub-prefect of Sainte-Menehould.
• Napoleon decorates him, saying "You have changed the face of the world." 
• At the 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.

          Return of the King and his Family after the Flight to Varennes, unidentified print / zoom 

• Men do not remove their hats.

Return of the Royal Family to Paris on June 25, 1791, anonymous / zoom

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



   . 

The royals are allowed into the Tuileries palace, but the guards are almost massacred. They have been riding on top of one of the coaches for all these days, under the jeers and threats of the crowds. Little is said about them.  

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 had not yet a political notion other than 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. 

But Michelet and those who follow 

overlook the extent of the betrayal. 

*     *     *

Next,

The king's disastrous flight revisited: 

The puzzle of the guards' yellow vests