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 if 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 them to City Hill 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 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 T O ASSURE IT" 

"I recall all the charm of the queen's illusion, of which she could not grasp either the impossibility or the danger."

-- Madame Campan, the queen's 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 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

# # #

Queens' sole function was to give children to France. Otherwise their role was ceremonial only.

By becoming the icon of fashion Marie-Antoinette contested

the obligation to remain in the shadows...

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

...and inadvertently took over the role of favori or favorite, queens' detested but useful counterpart:

 

 

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

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

• 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 ttraditonal clan to favor.

But clans were improvised around or against them, permitting the intrigues and struggles for influence that made the stifling and extremely expensive life at court worthwhile.

• As well, favoris and favorites were lightning rods, whose extravagance concentrated popular fury on themselves and away from the ruler, who was thought merely misled.

But Louis XVI had no intimate companion and Marie-Antoinette thoughtlessly assumed the favorite's role.

# # #

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

proximity to royals was a badge of identity,* she incurred 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...

  

     Marie-Antoinette: Thoughtlessness Guillotined, documentary, 2022 / Internet

...were at the origin of tragedy.  

"Without her Parisiens would probably have kept their love for the King. 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)

# # #

        

"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 live on: 

"Barack Antoinette," 

a columnist called Obama to castigate a fête. 

     -- Maureen Dowd commenting his 60th birthday celebration

 in The New York Times

*     *     *

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  

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 (Michelet, p. 51)

" The certain cause, for the women, for the crowd of the most miserable, was hunger. Having made a rider dismount, the 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." (p. 51)

Michelet on the women's engagement:

"Great misery is fierce, it strikes the most feeble" (p.56)

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 militantes were hungry, such as market-women and prostitutes, but they were surrounded by misery. 

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 peple of golden beggars, to make them forget the people? How be surprised that such kings become hard and barbarous strangers?" (pp.51-52)

# # #

The story:

• These pictures are misleading. The march was much tougher, for it was a cold, rainy October day and they 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 and several hundred men dressed as women arrive at Versailles toward 16h. The National Guard led by La Fayette* and a crowd of men join them a few hours later.   

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

Internet, no source named

• 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.

• Parisians camp out in the palace's huge courtyard:

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

# # #

At dawn on October 6, the mob breaks through the gates and seeks the queen to kill her:

• Chambermaids lock the door and help her 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 takes five minutes for servants to hear the terrified pounding.

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

Brigands Massacre of a Guard at the Queen's Apartment, print  by Jean-François Janinet / 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 but 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:

Michelet says La Fayette was next to her. He does not like her and says little about her, including almost nothing of her execution.

# # #

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." 

-- Michelet, p. 79

 

• 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 text: The Flight to Varennes in "History of the French Revolution" by Jules Michelin, 1847 (Fr. ed 1971).

 

           Varennes, June 22, 1791, Michelet p.163 

"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."

Louis's "Flight to Varennes" (the insignificant town where he was arrested) destroyed the aura of monarchy. It is considered as important as taking the Bastille.

Historians agree that the flight's success would have brought civil war. But they miss that such was precisely what the king intended, because they neglect details that to modern people make no sense. 

This page tells the story. The next concerns those details.

# # #

You can still follow the route...

  Zoom

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

Bondy: The burg 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 king leaves a list of grievances on the desk, and the statement that he will repeal the Constitution.

• 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 throws light on the servant's animosity.) 

-- Madame Campan, p. 340

• That change means that royalist troops from the frontier stay in the region much longer than the few hours originally planned, which destabilizes the population. Have they come to collect unpaid taxes? 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 and the next page 

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, he 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.   

• The coach's weight means that the fugitives arrive three hours late (some say five hours) 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 king appears. 

• The worried travellers go on to the next stop. They find that the men have dismounted and and that many have gone to drink with the locals and fraternize with them. The group goes on alone.

• Jean Drouet, who owns the relay at Sainte-Menehould, has recognized 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 few men who drink in a tavern. At Drouet's passionate demand they barricade the route. The inexperienced guards (please see the next page) cannot stop them.

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 will enter 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 tolling bells spread in an extraordinary way. The whole dark countryside was in a fever [...] 

--  Michelet, p.166

• The population comes 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 that he be kept from going farther. The population demands that he be taken back to Paris.

• Morning comes and the king tries to delay the departure, hoping that the royalist troops on the border 15 miles away, will free him. The commander can be sure only of German mercenaries, and fears the turmoil of the countryside. The force comes nevertheless. But the king has left. It tries to follow, but encounters physical obstacles, the horses tire, news comes that a garrison is marching against it...

It leaves.

•  The royals are forced to return to Paris. Local guards surround them and thousands of people relay each other to surround the coach:

   The People in Arms by Jean-Baptiste Lesueur / zoom

• The return to Paris takes four days.

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

• At Chalons, a town with little commercial production and so without a radical underclass, 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 and a count who arrives on horseback, wearing the Cross of Saint Louis and crying "Long live the king!," is massacred. His head and hat are brandished on pikes.  

• Emissaries from the National Assembly preserve order but the coach can advance only step by step and as it approaches Paris, crowds are increasingly hostile.

# # #

In Paris posters forbid demonstrations. Residents line the streets in silence, but applause breaks out when Jean Drouet appears at the head of the cortege.*

* His life:

• As a delegate to the radical government elected a year later, he votes the death of the king. 
• He fights in the war against Austria, is captured and is among the prisoners exchanged for the king's young daughter.
• He participates in a plot against a later government, escapes and 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.

-- Wikipédia

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

• At place de la Concorde...

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.

     Close-up: Men leave their hats on as the king passes by. A clergyman turns away. 

• ...the cortège passes in front of the royal statue. A veil over its eyes symbolizes the monarchy's blindness. 

-- Michelet, p. 183

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

 

• On her return Marie-Antoinette looks in a mirror and sees that her 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. 

This accepted narrative

overlooks the extent of the betrayal. 

*     *     *

Next,

The king's disastrous flight revisited