Marie Antoinette

by Hilaire Belloc

By an ironical accident, this very Parliament of one year, from which the great and by this time well-known leaders of the early Revolutionary movement were specifically excluded (for no man might sit in it who had sat in the National Assembly), had thrust upon it the duty or the burden of the Great War. Such was the Revolutionary time and air, that from anywhere genius sprang; and through these men of the Legislative—so many of them young, nearly all of them unknown, chosen only to sit in an ephemeral assembly for a year—there blew such inspiration as Plato thought to blow through poets, but which, in times of social creation, blows through rhetoricians too, Chief among these was the group of men from the South who were later called the Gironde. It was their business to demand and to withstand the first assault of Europe, and indeed before the Parliament met at all, it was certain that the assault would come, for in the August of 1791, in the midst of the reaction which overshadowed Paris, and while the principal leaders of the Revolution were exiled or in hiding, there was drawn up that compact between the German monarchs which is called the Declaration of Pillnitz.

This document has too often been put forward as an example of the hesitation and moderation of the Kings. Such a view of it is an academic reaction from the old, popular, and vague but in the main just conception that privilege made deliberate war upon the Revolution: a conception which often took Pillnitz for the inception of that counter-crusade.

The matter can be presented quite simply to the reader. The Emperor, Marie Antoinette’s brother, whom we have seen so eager, had the flight to Varennes succeeded, to move his armies at once, combined at Pillnitz with the King of Prussia in an appeal to all monarchical governments that they should use such strength as might give back to the King of France his old arbitrary power, and re-establish him therein. The two allies swear publicly that they will use all necessary force, when such an appeal bears fruit, to support this universal assault upon the French people, and meanwhile they will direct their troops to the best striking points from which the military action of that people may be paralysed.

There is the Declaration of Pillnitz in a few words; and while one partisan may insist upon its caution or nullity, another upon its insolence and provocation, all must agree who read history quietly and without a brief, that it was a violent and public declaration of hostile intention as it was also the first definite public act from which hostilities sprang.

The Parliament met in September. Its proposed secondary value soon proved to be primary; the splendid definition, rapidity and precision of the National Assembly was well reflected among these younger and less tried men: but much more powerful than Parliament was the growing exaltation of the populace.

That had many roots: the oblivion of the French (after forty years) of what war might mean, the impatient passion for any solution which all feel during a moment of strain, most of all the moral certitude (and how well founded!) that if the enemy delayed they delayed only for their own purpose, and that war must certainly come—all these pressed to the final issue: the noise of the cataract could already be heard.

As to the acceptation of the Constitution by the royal family, their reluctance, the Queen’s anger, it but little concerns the story of her fate. At bottom she and Louis also were willing enough by this time to sign anything and to swear anything. The war must come, and the war would solve all. The Queen herself, who was now, as I have shown, in the thick of the intrigue, put it simply enough to the man she most loved, to Fersen, in a note that has been preserved and which she wrote before the end of September. “It would have been more noble to refuse (the Constitution) ... it is essential to accept (it), in order to destroy any suspicion that we are not acting in good faith.”

So far as concerns that unhappy and devoted life, one incident deserves a very special mention. Twice in the autumn there had been talk of yet another flight: the plan was not impossible, but it had been dropped, partly because the King might have had to fly alone, partly because the Queen was confident that a show of strength and a vigorous menace upon the frontier would be enough to change all. In the new year the proposal for their escape took on a more serious form, and Fersen reappeared for the last time, and for the last time saw the Queen.

It was upon Saturday morning, the 11th of February 1792, that he started upon that perilous journey, and it was his business to discuss in detail and by word of mouth whether escape were still possible. Upon Monday, the 13th, at evening, he passed the barrier of Paris. He saw the Queen before he slept, and next day at midnight spoke secretly to her and to her husband together. He carefully noted before them the routes that might be followed: the method of escape: perhaps (as had appeared in several plans) the string of forests that runs up from Paris north-eastward toward the marches of Flanders.

The King and the Queen wasted no little time in that midnight hurried parley in reproaches against the ingratitude of all and in bewailing their isolation. The next day Fersen left with nothing done. He returned indeed to Paris four days later, but he dared not enter the palace. The whole thing was futile and every plan had broken down.