"I HAVE NO TEARS LEFT TO CRY"

REVOLTS IN THE PROVINCES AND ENEMY INVASION, CONTEXT OF HORROR

 

The "September massacres:" Royalist prisoners are slaughtered in the belief that they form a fifth column. 

(September 2-6 septembre 1792)

 

Women are spared — except for Marie Antoinette's close friend, the Princesse de Lamballe:

 Zoom

"With what torments do you not butcher Lamballe, the intimate friend of the Queen? You split open her body, dragged it through town, showed her head and heart to the King and Queen, confined in the Temple." 

The mob brandishes her head and frightfully mutilated corpse on pikes in front of the Temple so that the royals will see them. Marie-Antoinette faints. Her daughter will say that that was the only time she saw her lose her self control.

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The most determined revolutionaries execute the king to make turning back impossible:

(On January 21 1793)

The Death of Louis XVI , English engraving, 1798 / zoom

"The king's farewell to his family" 

is the subject of innumerable royalist images. 

These are sold on the web. 

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Aged eight, Louis XVII is separated from his family to be made into a radical:

(On July 3, 1793)

The Dauphin Taken from his Mother by Domenico Pellegrini / zoom

 

Marie-Antoinette will wait for hours for a glimpse of him in the courtyard, but otherwise never sees him again. 

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Guards wake the queen at 2 a.m., the time when people are most vulnerable. They take her to the Conciergerie, the dark, damp, cold riverside prison where the arrested await trial and an almost certain death sentence.

(On August 2, 1793)

--This information and that below are from Marie-Antoinette by Antonia Fraser, 2001

The Conciergerie evoked during the opening ceremony of the Olympic games.  

Guards watch her continually, particularly after rescue attempts fail. People bribe police to gawk at her. Occasional sgns of sympathy: an excellent melon given for the queen, the young servant Rosalie Lamorlière who does all she can to help her and the non-juror priests* who come in disguise to say mass.

*Those who refuse to swear loyalty to the Constitution, following the Pope's command.

She hemorrhages, probably a sign of cancer.

For her last portrait, that of an elderly lady, please click.

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Her show trial is conducted with gratuitous cruelty:

• On October 12, she is awakened two hours after having gone to sleep, for a secret preliminary interrogation in the freezing cold. 

• One of her two lawyers arrives in Paris on October 13, with the trial beginning the next day. There is no answer to his request for time to read the documents.  

• The most painful charge: that she abused her little son. She loses her composure and replies "J'en appelle à toutes les mères" (I call out to all mothers). Even the hostile market women say the trial should be stopped.

The Trial of Marie Antoinette of Austria at the Revolutionary Tribunal / zoom

• It takes two days, 8 a.m.-11 p.m. (midnight on the second day). Though she is ill, the queen's only sustenance is half a cup of bouillon toward 4 p.m. on the second day; the woman bringing it spills the other half.

A royal consort might be sent to a convent or repudiated, but not killed. And nothing against Marie-Antoinette had been proved.

Yet at 4 a.m. she was declared guilty on all counts, and told she would be executed in the morning.

"I have no tears left to cry:" For her last messages to her sister-in-law and children, please click and scroll down.

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The Execution of Marie Antoinette on October 16, 1793, anonymous / zoom

Her execution came from her mistakes,

 from misogyny, 

from the need for a scapegoat

 and from baked-in lies.

 

Today we would say,

 "throwing red meat to the base."

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Next,

Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur