The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France

by Charles Duke Yonge

Louis and Marie Antoinette contemplate Foreign Intervention.—The Assembly
passes Laws to subordinate the Church to the Civil Power.—Insolence of La
Fayette.—Marie Antoinette refuses to quit France by Herself.—The
Jacobins and La Fayette try to revive the Story of the Necklace.—Marie
Antoinette with her Family.—Flight from Paris is decided on.—The Queen's
Preparations and Views.—An Oath to observe the new Ecclesiastical
Constitution is imposed on the Clergy.—The King's Aunts leave France.

The last sentence of the letter just quoted points to a new hope which the king and she had begun to entertain of obtaining aid from foreign princes. As it can hardly have been suggested to them by any other advisers, we may probably attribute the origination of the idea to the queen, who was naturally inclined to rate the influence of the empire highly, and to rely on her brother's zeal to assist her confidently. And Louis caught at it, as the only means of extricating him from a religious difficulty which was causing him great distress, and which appeared to him insurmountable by any means which he could command in his own country. As has been already seen, he had had no hesitation in yielding up his own prerogatives, and in making any concessions or surrenders which the Assembly required, so long as they touched nothing but his own authority. He had even (which was a far greater sacrifice in his eyes) sanctioned the votes which had deprived the Church of its property; but, in the course of the autumn the Assembly passed other measures also, which appeared to him absolutely inconsistent with religion. They framed a new ecclesiastical constitution which not only reduced the number of bishops (which, indeed, in France, as in all other Roman Catholic countries, had been unreasonably excessive), but which also vested the whole patronage of the Church in the municipal authorities, and generally subordinated the Church to the civil law. And having completed these arrangements, which to a conscientious Roman Catholic bore the character of sacrilege, they required the whole body of the clergy to accept them, and to take an oath to observe them faithfully.

Louis was in a great strait. Many of the chief prelates appealed to him for protection, which he thought his duty as a Christian man bound him to afford them. But the protection which they implored could only be given by refusal of the royal assent to the bill. And he could not disguise from himself that such an exercise of his veto would furnish a pretext to his enemies for more violent denunciations of himself and the queen than had yet been heard. He had also, though his personal safety was at all times very slightly regarded by him, begun to feel himself a prisoner, at the mercy of his enemies. La Fayette, as Commander-in-chief of the National Guard of Paris, had the protection of the royal palace intrusted to him; and he availed himself of this charge, not as the guardian of the royal family, but rather as their jailer,[1] placing his sentries so as to be spies and a restraint upon all their movements, and seeking every opportunity to gain an ignoble popularity by an ostentatious disregard of all their wishes, and of all courtesy, not to say decency, in his behavior to them.[2] And these considerations led the king, not only to authorize the Baron de Breteuil, who, as we have seen, had fled from the country in the previous year, to treat with any foreign princes who might he willing to exert themselves in his cause, but even to write, with his own hand, to the principal sovereigns, informing them that "in spite of his acceptance of the Constitution, the factious portion of his subjects openly manifested their intention of destroying the monarchy," and suggesting the idea of "an armed congress of the principal powers of Europe, supported by an armed force, as the best measure to arrest the progress of factions, to re-establish order in France, and to prevent the evils which were devouring his country from seizing on the other states of Europe.[3]"

The historians of the democratic party have denounced with great severity the conduct of Louis in thus appealing to foreign aid, as a proof that, in spite of his acceptance of the Constitution, he was meditating a counter- revolution. The whole tenor of his and the queen's correspondence proves that this charge is groundless; but it is equally certain that it was an impolitic step, one wholly opposed to every idea of Constitutional principles, of which the very foundation must always be perfect freedom from foreign influence, and from foreign connection in the internal government of the country.

Fortunately, his secret was well kept, so that no knowledge of this step reached the leaders of the popular party; and, however great may have been the queen's secret anxieties and fears, she kept them bravely to herself, displaying outwardly a serenity and a patience which won the admiration of all those who, in foreign countries, were watching the course of events in France with interest.[4] When she wept, she wept by herself. Her one comfort was that her children were always with her; and though the dauphin could only witness without understanding her grief, "remarking on one occasion, when in one of his childish books he met the expression 'as happy as a queen,' that all queens are not happy, for his mamma wept from morning till night." Her daughter was old enough to enter into her sorrows; and, as she writes to Madame de Polignac, mingles her own tears with hers. She had also the society of her sister-in-law Elizabeth, whom she had learned to love with an affection which could not be exceeded even by that which she bore her own sister, and which was cordially returned. She tells Madame de Polignac that Elizabeth's calmness is one great relief and support to them all; and Elizabeth can not find adequate words to express to one of her correspondents her admiration for the queen's "piety and resignation, which alone enable her to bear up against troubles such as no one before has ever known."

But amidst all her grief she cherishes hope—hope that the people (the "good people," as she invariably terms them) will return to their senses; and her other habitual feeling of benevolence, though she can now only exert it in forming projects for conferring further benefits on them when tranquillity should be restored. The feeling shows itself even in letters which have no reference to her own position. There had been discontent and signs of insurrection in the Netherlands which Mercy's recent letters led her to believe were passing away; and her congratulations to her brother on this peaceful result dwell on the happiness "which it is to be able to pardon one's subjects without shedding one drop of blood, of which sovereigns are bound to be always careful.[5]"

Her brother, and many of her friends in France, were at this time pressing her to quit the country, professing to believe that if her enemies knew that she was out of their reach, they would be less vehement in their hostility to the king; but she felt that such a course would be both unworthy of her, as timid and selfish, and in every way injurious rather than beneficial to her husband. It could not save his authority, which was what the Jacobins made it their first object to destroy; and it would deprive him of the support of her affection and advice, which he constantly needed.

"Pardon me, I beg of you," she replied to Leopold, "if I continue to reject your advice to leave Paris. Consider that I do not belong to myself. My duty is to remain where Providence has placed me, and to oppose my body, if the necessity should arise, to the knives of the assassins who would fain reach the king. I should be unworthy of the name of our mother, which is as dear to you as to me, if danger could make me desert the king and my children.[6]"

We have seen that Marie Antoinette dreaded calumny more than the knife or poison of the assassin; and there could hardly have been a greater proof how well founded her apprehensions were, and how unscrupulous her enemies, than is afforded by the fact that, in the latter part of this year, they actually brought back Madame La Mothe to Paris with the purpose of making a demand for a re-investigation of the whole story of the fraud on the jeweler—a pretense for reviving the libelous stories to the disparagement of the queen, the utter falsehood and absurdity of which had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the whole world four years before. Nor was it wholly a Jacobin plot. La Fayette himself was, to a certain extent, an accomplice in it. As commander of the National Guard of the city, it was his duty to apprehend one who was an escaped convict; but instead of doing so he preferred identifying himself with her, and on one occasion had what Mirabeau rightly called the inconceivable insolence to threaten the queen with a divorce on the ground of unfaithfulness to her husband. She treated his insinuations with the dignity which became herself, and the scorn which they and their utterers deserved; and he found that his conduct had created such general disgust among all people who made the slightest pretense to decency, that he feared to lose his popularity if he did not disconnect himself from the plotters. Accordingly, he separated himself from the lady, though he still forbore to arrest her, and for some time confined himself to his old course of heaping on the royal family these petty annoyances and insults, which he could inflict with impunity because they were unobserved except by his victims. It is remarkable, however, that Mirabeau, who held him in a contempt which, however deserved, had in it some touch of rivalry and envy, believed that the queen was not really so much the object of his animosity as the king. In his eyes "all the manoeuvres of La Fayette were so many attacks on the queen; and his attacks on the queen were so many steps to bring him within reach of the king. It was the king whom he really wanted to strike; and he saw that the individual safety of one of the royal pair was as inseparable from that of the other as the king was from his crown.[7]" And this opinion of Mirabeau is strongly corroborated by the Count de la Marck, who, a few weeks later, had occasion to go to Alsace, and who took great pains to ascertain the general state of public feeling in the districts through which he passed. During his absence he was in constant correspondence with those whom he had left behind, and he reports with great satisfaction that in no part of the country had he found the very slightest ill-feeling toward the queen. It was in Paris alone that the different libels against her were forged, and there alone that they found acceptance; and, manifestly referring to the projected departure from Paris, he expresses his firm conviction that the moment that she is at liberty, and able to show herself in the provinces, she will win the confidence of all classes.[8]

However greatly Mirabeau would, on other grounds, have preferred personal intercourse with the court, he thought that his power of usefulness depended so entirely on his connection with it being unsuspected, that he did not think it prudent to solicit interviews with the queen. But he kept up a constant communication with the court, sometimes by notes and elaborate memorials, addressed indeed to Louis, but intended for Marie Antoinette's perusal and consideration; and sometimes by conversations with La Marck, which the count was expected to repeat to her. But, in all the counsels thus given, the thing most to be remarked is the high opinion which they invariably display of the queen's resolution and ability. Every thing depends on her; it is from her alone that he wishes to receive instructions; it is her resolution that must supply the deficiencies of all around her. When he urges that a line of conduct should be adopted calculated to render their majesties more popular; that they should show themselves more in public; that they should walk in the most frequented places; that they should visit the hospitals, the artisans' workshops, and make themselves friends by acts of charity and generosity, it is to her that he looks to carry out his suggestions, and to her affability and presence of mind that he trusts for the success which is to result from them;[9] and La Marck is equally convinced that "her ability and resolution are equal to the conduct of affairs of the first importance."