The Queen’s Lover Read online

  In the following days the bourgeois militia recently formed to protect the Estates-General from royalist attack—it was being called the National Guard and was led by Lafayette—would be further reinforced by defecting government troops. On the morning of July 14 a crowd decided to march on that symbol of royal despotism, the Bastille, where the troops guarding the fortress consisted of 110 men, 80 of them retired invalids. Shortly after noon, upon amiably inviting a delegation of demonstrators to visit the prison, the Bastille’s governor, Marquis de Launay, promised not to attack any rioters unless his soldiers were fired on first. But the band of rebels lingered in the fortress; the crowd grew impatient, suspecting a trap. When a second group of citizens entered one of the fortress’s interior courtyards, seeking news of their comrades, de Launay thought he was being attacked and ordered his men to shoot. Ninety-eight persons were killed, and seventy wounded. News of the carnage spread swiftly through the city, and from then on there was no way of stopping a bloodbath. Several detachments of Lafayette’s National Guard marched on the Bastille with cannons it had seized from the government. In midafternoon, de Launay surrendered his fortress to the mob, which rushed into the bastion to liberate its seven remaining inmates: they consisted of four forgers, a libertine nobleman, and two lunatics, one of whom was an aged man with a waist-length beard who called himself the Major of Immensity and asked for news of Louis XV’s health. De Launay had been promised safe passage to the Hotel de Ville but was killed on the way, at place de Grève, where a young pastry cook hacked off his head with a pocket knife and placed it on a pike. By the evening of July 14 the capture of the ancien régime’s most formidable emblem had spread terror among France’s privileged classes. Most princes of the blood, including Artois, made plans to leave Paris in the following days to seek refuge abroad, as did many of the nation’s most powerful nobles. (The queen’s friend, Duchesse de Polignac, governess of the royal children, was among the first to leave the country.)

  As for the king and queen, safely sheltered in the spectral routine of Versailles, throughout the day of July 14 they had remained totally ignorant of what was happening in the capital. It was an aristocrat of liberal sympathies, Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, who woke Louis XVI a bit after midnight to break the news to him.

  “Is it a revolt?” the king asked Liancourt upon being told of the seizure of the Bastille.

  “No, sire, it is a revolution,” Liancourt replied.

  MUCH HAS BEEN said about the king and queen’s decision to remain at Versailles after July 14, and not travel, as most of their friends and relatives had, to some more secure site. The most popular of suggested cities was Metz, in northwestern France: close to the border of the Austrian Netherlands, it was one of Europe’s most powerfully fortified towns. Marie Antoinette had approved of the idea of moving there, and had even begun to pack. But the king, at first undecided, eventually heeded the advice of his brother Comte de Provence, who had stayed put in the Parisian area, and had advised him to do the same. Some years later the king told me that he greatly regretted not having left Versailles on July 14. “I should have gone then and I wanted to; but what could I do when Monsieur himself [Provence] begged me not to go, and the Marshal de Broglie, commander of my troops, told me: ‘Yes, we can go to Metz, but what shall we do when we get there?’” The king then repeated sadly: “I missed my opportunity, and it never came again.”

  I remained in Paris throughout much of that year. Within a week of the capture of the Bastille there developed paranoid rumors in France that hordes of homeless brigands sympathetic to the Revolution were roaming throughout the country, pillaging property and murdering members of the more privileged classes. My family’s panic concerning “the Great Fear,” as it came to be called throughout Europe, was acute. Since they were concerned that as one of the royal family’s closest friends I might come to harm, I wrote more often than usual, in the following months, to my father, and also to my king. I told them that all carriages were stopped in Paris, and everyone was forced to go on foot. All was confusion, disorder, consternation. The Comte d’Artois and his children, and the Princes de Condé, Conti, and Bourbon, among many others, had fled under assumed names to protect themselves from the mob. Every day numerous citizens were leaving the city, and unless quiet was restored, by winter it would be deserted.

  July 22, 1789

  Riots are taking place in all the cities of the kingdom…. The prisons have been opened, and it is that kind of rabble who creates the disorder. The bourgeoisie immediately armed itself, and that may help to restore tranquillity. The brigands, the canaille, are spread throughout the country; they’re pillaging…all the abbeys and châteaus; they’re hunted everywhere, and yesterday, in one spot, we captured one hundred and nineteen of them; many more will probably be taken.

  That, my dear father, is this country’s sad news; it is in a state of violent crisis; we must now see what the Estates-General will do; but at this moment all bonds are broken; obedience has disappeared in the army, and I doubt if it will be as easy to restore order as it was to overthrow it.

  ON AUGUST 4 another uprising began. Stones were thrown at the windows of the archbishop of Paris. A few nobles considered particularly hostile to the Revolution were shot and hung up on streetlamps. In order to quell the disarray that ensued in the Assembly, the king, with extreme reluctance, signed the Declaration of the Rights of Man drafted by Lafayette (it goes without saying that it had been written with the American model in mind—the American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, had even added to it a few grace notes of his own). To the queen’s despair, Louis XVI also acceded to having the blue, white, and red cockade that was the revolutionaries’ principal symbol attached to his hat. As for many members of the nobility and the more privileged bourgeoisie, they embarked on an orgy of dispossession. My former comrade in arms Vicomte de Noailles suggested the abolition of all feudal dues. The Vicomte de Beauharnais decreed that all citizens would have equal rights of admission to any military or civil office. To the horror of much of the clergy, the Duc du Chatelet proposed the abolition of church tithes. The Marquis de Saint-Fargeau propounded the extinction of all exclusive rights to game—henceforth peasants could kill any animals interfering with their crops, or needed for their own nourishment. The customers of my favorite café, the Procope, also frequented by Danton, were equally inflamed with this passion for altruistic giving: they filled a tub with silver buckles from their shoes and carried them to the Assembly. In the following weeks, a delegation of painters’ wives, including Mesdames David, Vernet, and Fragonard, appeared before the Assembly to offer it their jewels, one of them saying that they “would blush to wear these baubles when patriotism incited all citizens to self-sacrifice.” After a vote of gratitude, the ladies were given a torchlight procession to the Louvre with an honor guard from the Academy of Painting, while a band played an old tune, much fancied by my mother, that was becoming a cult song of the Revolution, “Where Better Could One Be Than in the Bosom of One’s Family?” Meanwhile disorder was increasing throughout the country. Paris was the focus of trouble, and everyone was in haste to leave it. Numerous vagabonds and deserters were taking refuge there. They were being taken into the new militia—the National Guard—which was under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette.

  The king’s authority remained null. Paris trembled before forty to fifty thousand bandits and vagrants established at Montmartre or in the Palais-Royal. Members of the urban bourgeoisie were intoxicated with the notion, long expounded by the philosophes, that all men are equal; and the abolition of feudal rights (voted so glibly by the National Assembly in a three-hour session) had persuaded citizens that they had nothing to pay anymore. I wrote my father that summer, from my army post at Valenciennes, to sum up these events.

  Valenciennes, August 15th, 1789

  Any man in the nation can volunteer for the National Guard—mere valets can become lieutenants overnight. They have better pay than in our regiments and every eff
ort is made to entice them. According to the war office, since July 13th there have been 12,570 deserters. The king’s authority is totally annulled, as is that of the parliaments and the magistrates; the Estates-General themselves tremble before Paris, and this fear greatly influences their deliberations. In this kingdom there are no laws, order, justice, discipline, or religion anymore; all bonds are broken; and how can they be reestablished? Such are the effects of Anglomania and philosophy. France is ruined for a long time to come.

  Valenciennes, September 8, 1789

  Everywhere the rabble are committing frightful excesses against the châteaus of the nobles, which they pillage and burn along with deeds and papers; they even maltreat the owners if they find them there…. In urban centers insurgents have broken into the offices of tax collectors and driven them away. The taxes cannot be collected. The king will soon be unable to meet his financial commitments, and bankruptcy is imminent. The nobles are in despair; the clergy is going out of its mind, and even the Third Estate is wholly dissatisfied: it is the canaille who reign, and they are satisfied because having nothing to lose, they can only gain. No one dares to command, and no one is willing to obey.

  Such is France’s state at this moment. One shudders at the sight of these events, and it is impossible to foresee how they will end. All this makes me very unhappy. I share with you, my dear father, the attachment you have for France, and I cannot witness its ruin without sorrow. Many regiments have mutinied; some have even attacked their chief officers. In our regiments things have not yet gone so far, but our soldiers did force open the gates of the town and for three days went out to drink in the country, where they committed horrible excesses. On the third day they would certainly have pillaged the town and set it on fire if citizens had not stopped them. Aided by the bourgeois militia, we have now reestablished order and quiet.

  Less than three months after the capture of the Bastille—on October 5, 1789—another dreadful rebellion took place. Angered by the king’s continued defiance of the National Assembly and above all incited by the high price of bread, Parisian working women organized a march on Versailles that within a few hours would turn as violent as the fall of the Bastille.

  The queen had been at the Petit Trianon the earlier part of that day. I had arrived at Versailles a week earlier, to spend the winter in a house I’d acquired in town. We had spent the morning in one of the bowers she so loved, reading to each other from Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloise. The king was shooting in the woods above Meudon. I returned to Versailles with the queen in time for dinner; but a half hour after we’d sat down the Comte and Comtesse de Provence rushed into her quarters in a state of great agitation, followed by an emissary from the Comte de Saint Priest. Several thousand Parisians, they announced, were marching on Versailles. The queen immediately demanded that guardsmen be sent to find the king, and bring him home.

  The band of women, most of whom came from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the same festering Parisian area in which the events of July 14 had taken place, had gathered at the Hotel de Ville and headed for Versailles before noon. Armed with pikes, sickles, and guns, they were undaunted by the pouring rain and the muddy roads. Versailles, as one can imagine, was in turmoil. We courtiers were unarmed that day, for at the palace none of us were allowed to carry more than a decorative sword. However, the Versailles National Guard and the Flanders regiment stood with their backs to the gates of the royal courtyard, ready for battle. Upon being brought news of the women’s march the king immediately left for home, galloping all the way up Versailles’s Grande Avenue; he arrived at three, and cloistered himself in the Council Room with the queen and his ministers. A series of agitated discussions, the queen told me later, took place concerning the royal family’s preparation for the expected invasion. Would it be more secure to decamp to Rambouillet, twice the distance of Versailles from Paris and far more secure? The king was determined to stay. Marie Antoinette also rejected the idea of leaving, wishing to remain at her husband’s side, as she had during the July uprising. A message that Lafayette and his National Guard were on the way relieved the royal family. But no decision on how to deal with the protests had yet been made by the time the market women arrived.

  The first of them reached Versailles at about four o’clock. Drenched to the bone by rain, most of them took refuge at the Assembly, while a delegation of them—half a dozen women—hastened to find the king. When they reached the antechamber of Louis’s quarters, the Oeil-de-Boeuf, he was still conferring with his ministers. Exhausted by the long, wet march and dazzled by the splendor of the palace, many of the women were overcome by timidity when confronted with their monarch. One of them, the king later reported, fainted. Another, bolder one, who had been assigned to do the speaking, harangued the king concerning Parisians’ need for bread. The king told her that he would order the directors of two granaries to release all possible stores, and gave her a copy of the order in writing. The women left, some satisfied, some still murmuring angrily, some threatening that they had worn their aprons in order to carry the queen’s entrails, with which they intended to make cockades.

  An additional mob of women arrived at 8 p.m., after nightfall, and all of us heard them howling, “Bread, bread, bread!” The king was still conferring with his advisers. A group of courtiers—I was among them—joined him in his study. There were more pleas on our part that the royal family leave for Rambouillet, or Normandy. Paralyzed, as usual, by indecision, Louis kept repeating, “A fugitive king! A fugitive king!” He asked to speak privately to the queen, and after a few minutes recalled his advisers and ordered that his carriages be prepared. Marie Antoinette hastened toward her children’s quarters. “We’re leaving in a quarter of an hour, hurry,” she told their new governess, Madame de Tourzel, the kind, calm widow who had been appointed to take care of the royal children when Madame de Polignac had left for exile abroad.

  But as soon as the crowd, many of whom were bivouacked in the place d’Armes, saw the carriages being led out of the stables, they were enraged. “The king is leaving!” the cry rang out. A mob assaulted the carriages, cut the harnesses, and led the horses away. Panicked, the king and queen decided not to leave after all. By then it was 10 p.m. Marie Antoinette conferred with Madame de Tourzel. They decided that if there were to be any cause for alarm, the dauphin and Madame Royale should seek refuge in the king’s apartments. The royal family was somewhat reassured when General de Lafayette arrived on his great white horse, splattered with mud. He reassured the king that Parisians would not turn violent. The king and his friends were relieved by his words, and entrusted him with the security of Versailles; Louis decided to retire, and urged the queen that she do the same. I left the palace shortly after 1 a.m., along with the rest of the courtiers. By two in the morning, everyone at Versailles had gone to bed.

  Meanwhile some of the Parisian invaders had found shelter in stables, churches, and taverns; but most of them camped out on the Place d’Armes in front of the château. Groups of men and women sat around bonfires, eating, drinking, and singing. But shortly before dawn there were drumbeats, signifying a call to action. Several women had noticed that the gates into the chapel courtyard were open. The crowd started for the palace, some assembling under the king’s window, while others ran up the queen’s stairway. They massacred one of the queen’s bodyguards on the way; another was killed at the entrance to the queen’s apartment.

  The queen had been awakened shortly before six by a noise coming from the terrace. Her chambermaid reassured her that some of the Parisian women were probably assembled there. But suddenly a voice called out from the guardroom, “Save the queen!” Marie Antoinette jumped out of bed, put on a dressing gown, and ran down the stairs to the king’s bedroom, which was empty. The king, in fact, had put on his robe and rushed to the queen’s quarters. His guards reassured him that their paths must have crossed. The king next set out to the dauphin’s quarters and returned to his apartments, the child wrapped in his arms. It was still t
otally dark, his candle went out, and he told his attendants to hold on to his robe. Finding their way through the dark as best they could, his retinue reached the dining hall, where the queen had just arrived. She was worried about her daughter and rushed down an interior stairway to get her; within moments the entire family was reunited, joined by Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister, and the king’s aunts, Mesdames Tantes. Soon General de Lafayette reappeared, having just saved some thirty of the king’s body guards who had fallen to the mob.

  As the gang of women approached the royal apartments the queen stood in front of a desk, between her daughter, Madame Royale, and Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister. The four-year-old dauphin—the former Duc de Normandie, whom I cherished—stood in front of her, tugging at his sister’s hair and repeatedly saying, “Maman, I’m hungry.” Louis XVI was still consulting with his ministers in a neighboring room, but Lafayette returned and convinced the sovereigns to step out onto the balcony. So the royal family came out and faced thousands of their citizens, the queen holding her daughter by the hand and clutching the dauphin in her arms. I was standing with the shouting mob, a few hundred feet away from my cherished friend; how I wish I could have given her a sign of reassurance! “No children!” a voice suddenly shouted. Marie Antoinette took the children back into the king’s room and faced the crowd all alone. She made a deep curtsy, her hands crossed on her chest. It is to this moment that I trace the emergence of the great latent strength in the queen’s character that had remained muted during the sovereigns’ years of prosperity. Those in the crowd who had been jeering her moments earlier seemed to be awed by her simplicity and dignity. For the first time in years Marie Antoinette heard shouts of “Long live the queen!”