Harriet Martineau

“ Besides, nobody in France could question the feet. To say nothing of the old king, languishing in the midst of costly pleasures, so vicious that by every indulgence he purchased the curses of virtuous families, and the hatred of the poor,—besides all the extravagances in that quarter, there were the nobility, sitting heavy upon the people throughout the land, like the nightmare upon the sleep of a wearied man. These nobles must all be rich,—must all be pampered in luxury, though not one of them would work with his head or hands. If a nobleman had five sons, they must all be pampered alike ”

“ Not only was there the clamour of an angry multitude without, but a hammering and battering at all the doors, and fierce cries, and clashing of arms—all the dreadful sounds of fighting—from the queen’s apartments. The mob had indeed forced their way in. Her two watchful ladies had heard the shout from the corridor, given by a faithful guard at the peril of his life, “Save the queen!” They lifted her from her bed, threw a dressing-gown over her, and hurried her across a great apartment which divided her rooms from the king’s. ”

“ It was oppressively hot; and the rooms of the palace were crowded with gentlemen, adherents of the court, who had come to devote themselves finally for their king and his family. The Swiss guards,—picked Swiss soldiers, strong and brave, hired to guard the person and palace of the sovereign,—stood silently at their posts, their red uniforms contrasting with the black clothes of the seven hundred gentlemen who waited to see what they were to do. ”

“ Besides the transaction between the artisan and me, there is a great sum to be paid to the king upon the indenture, and another and a larger before the lad begins his trade. What can a poor peasant do with his boys but make them poorer peasants than himself, if that is possible? But it is not possible. Is there coarser woollen than this that I wear? Is there a tougher leather than my belt is made of? And is there anything for the feet poorer than our wooden clogs? And as for food, we are as far from health and strength on the one hand, as we are from the grave on the other—just half-way. ”

“ Followed by the ladies of his family, he walked along the line, and back again, leaving nothing but contempt behind. “All is lost,” said the queen to Madame Campan, as she entered her apartments: “the king showed no energy; and this review has done nothing but harm.” What a lot was hers! To be dragged down, with her children, to destruction, by the apathy of a husband, while she herself had spirit enough to have ruled an empire, but must not now exert it, because it would exasperate the people to have the foreigner, the Austrian, meddle with the affairs of France! ”

“ It shows how the royal family and their attendants were regarded,—how tyrannical and cruel, how selfish and how powerful, they were thought. The royal family was from this time forward greatly wronged by the people; but it was because the people had already been much more wronged by the rich and powerful. They had been so ground down into poverty and wretchedness, that they felt the fiercest envy, the most brutal rage, towards all the wealthy and noble, believing them born to be unboundedly happy, and to make everybody below them as miserable as they pleased. ”

“ This was the occasion, if the king had been a man of spirit, to forget that he had blood to spill,—to assert his rights as a ruler and as an innocent man,—to daunt his enemies, and rouse his friends,—to carry off his family in triumph,—to save his crown and kingdom, his life and reputation. ”

“ Royal carriages, and waggons full of corn,—the king’s guards and the ragamuffin crowd; round the king’s carriage a mob of dirty, fierce fish-women and market-women, eating as they walked, and sometimes screaming out close at the coach-door, “We shall not want bread any more. We have got the baker, and the baker’s wife, and the little baker’s boy:”—such was the procession. ”

“ Some vague rumours reached the palace; but the court ladies and their guests danced away in the orangery, till the time for breaking up the ball arrived. Late at night, a nobleman who had a right to demand an audience of the king at all times, arrived, made his way, dusty as he was, to the king’s chamber, and told of the rebellion, the destruction of the Bastille, and the murder of two faithful officers, well-known to the king. “Why,” said the king, as much surprised as if nothing had happened to warn him, “this is a revolt.”
“It is not a revolt,” said the nobleman: “it is a revolution.” ”

“ The Swiss lion, wounded and dying, grasps with its failing claws the French shield, with the royal lilies upon it.—If the king had sent his family to the Assembly for safety, and himself remained to fall with his adherents, this monument would not have been, as it is now, a reproach upon his memory, durable as Swiss honour and as the everlasting rock. ”

“ It was too plain to all now that everything must be yielded to the people, if lives were to be saved. As soon as it was light, Lafayette led into a balcony the commander of the Flanders regiment,—the body-guard,—with a huge tricolor in his hat, instead of the royal white cockade. All the soldiers of the regiment immediately mounted tricolor cockades, and were cheered by the mob. The king appeared on the balcony, with Lafayette, and they cheered him too; but some voices cried that he must go to Paris. ”

“ Barnave feared they would kill him, as they had already killed one person under similar circumstances. He threw himself almost out of the coach-door as he cried, “Tigers, have you ceased to be Frenchmen? From being brave fellows have you turned assassins?” The Princess Elizabeth, fearing lest he should fall out of the carriage, grasped the skirt of his coat; and the queen told Madame Campan afterwards that she could not but be struck with the oddity of seeing the Princess Elizabeth taking care of the safety of a man whom they had all abhorred as a rebel and a traitor. ”

“ Never, perhaps, were the absurd notions of the privileges of royalty held in such exaggeration as by the common people of France at this time; and never, perhaps, was a more intense hatred shown among men than by those who abolished this royalty. The story of the young king Louis the Seventeenth, which is now to be told, is a standing lesson to all who may imagine that to be a prince is to be happier than other people. ”

“ Weary as they all were,—after having travelled so far, and escaped so many dangers,—and now so near the frontier, so near Bouillé’s camp, so close upon the queen’s own country,—they were to pursue their weary way back to Paris,—journeying in disgrace, prisoners in the eyes of all the people, to be plunged again into the midst of their enemies, now enraged by their flight. It would have been easier to a spirit like the queen’s to have died, with those who belonged to her, in one more struggle,—in one rush to the camp, than to undergo the slow despair of a return among their enemies. ”

“ There was the sound of wheels, and the tramp of many horses, and the voices of a large company.
“It is the Count and his family,” said Marie, “coming to the chateau by the shortest road. No—do not go, boys,” she entreated, as they left their faggots, and began forcing their way through the brushwood towards the pond, that they might see the sight in the lane. “Robin, dear Robin!—Marc,—come back! Do come back, now! You will see them much better to-morrow. They will make a much grander show to-morrow. Charles, do make them stay here!” ”

“ The gazers saw that this odd courier did not know the post-house; for he spurred past it, and had to inquire for it. The master of the post, Drouet, of revolutionary politics, was in a very bad humour, and had been so all day, having been angry about the mysterious hussars in the morning, and no less angry at seeing the village now full of dragoons, from another quarter, whose business here he could not understand. These dragoons, strolling through the streets, touched their helmets to the party in the carriage, which the waiting-maid of the baroness acknowledged with remarkable grace. ”

“ All Paris had been kept awake by stories of saddled horses in the royal stables, of packed carriages, and a host of armed nobles, always hovering about, ready to rescue him and murder the people. It does indeed appear that latterly there had been various mysterious meetings of gentlemen, who were secretly armed: and report, which always exaggerates these things, declared that thirty thousand such armed gentlemen were hidden in the woods, about Saint Cloud, and that they would overpower the people’s guard, and carry off the family. ”

“ She observed that General Lafayette was certainly a rebel: but that an officer who commanded forty thousand men, the capital, and a large extent of country, should be called a chieftain rather than a robber. One would think this was little enough to say in favour of such a man as Lafayette: yet the queen the next day asked Madame Campan, with a mournful gravity, what she could have meant by taking Lafayette’s part, and silencing the other ladies because they did not like him. ”

“ We see in prints, how the hair was dressed at that time,—frizzed and powdered, and piled up with silk cushions, and ribbons and flowers, till the wonder was how any head could bear such a weight. It took a long time to dress a lady’s hair in those days. The queen sat before a most splendid toilet-table, in the middle of the room. The ladies who had been in waiting for twenty-four hours now went out, and gave place to others in full dress, with rose-coloured brocade petticoats, wide hoops, and high head-dresses with lappets, and all the finery of a court. ”

“ The alarm-bell was clanging; there were lights in all the windows: men poured out of the houses, half-dressed, and rolled barrels, and laid felled trees across the road, that no help might arrive on the king’s behalf.
And what did the king do next? He asked for something to eat! “Something to eat” was always a great object with him; and he seemed to find comfort under all trials in his good appetite. He sat now in an upper story of Monsieur Sauce’s house, eating bread and cheese and drinking Burgundy,—declaring that this bottle of Burgundy was the best he ever tasted. ”

“ All thinking persons must have known that the king could not really approve and rejoice in a new Constitution such as the people liked,—a Constitution which took from him many and great powers and privileges which he considered to be as truly his own as the throne itself. On the other hand, the royal family believed that this act was only one step towards the destruction of the monarchy altogether,—only one stage towards their own total ruin. ”

“ There the rosy, curly-headed boy was seen digging in the winter, and sowing seeds in the spring; and, sometimes, feeding the ducks on the garden ponds with crumbs of bread. Still he did not forget what he had seen and heard. One day, his father saw the boy looking at him very gravely and earnestly. The king asked him what he was thinking about. Louis said he wanted to ask a very serious question, if he might; and the king gave him leave.
“I want to know,” said Louis, “why all the people who used to love you so much are now so angry with you. ”

“ Any shop-keeper in Paris might turn away his shop-boy for insolence; any tradesman’s wife might dismiss her cook for unwholesome cookery: but here was the sovereign of France compelled to retain in his service a man whom he believed to have said that it would be a meritorious act to murder him; and this man’s pastry must be admitted to the royal table every day! The man held the reversion to the office of king’s pastry-cook (the right to it when the occupant should die) , and the right once acquired, the man could not, by court custom, be got rid of. ”

“ It was difficult for the poor queen to be patient, expecting, as she did daily, the murder of the king. Though this fear seems to have been unfounded, it caused her as much suffering as if it had been just.—She had a breastplate made for the king, of silk many times folded, and well wadded, so that it would resist the blow of a dagger, and even a pistol-ball. This under-dress was made at Madame Campan’s house; and she brought it into the palace, wearing it as an under-petticoat, that no one might see it. ”