Marie Antoinette

by Hilaire Belloc

That order may be criticised, but it may also be defended. La Fayette was marching on Versailles from Paris with a considerable force of partly trained Militia. The Guards, round whom the legend of the supper had grown, and whose white cockades were an insult to the national colours, exasperated the populace beyond bearing, and were, it was thought, the main cause of the pressure to which the troops were subjected. Wisely or foolishly, the Guard was withdrawn; the line regiments alone were left to contain the mob.

It was eight o’clock, and for two hours further a futile deliberation proceeded in the royal rooms. In those hours first one messenger then another convinced the King of a thing inconceivable in those days—personal danger to himself and especially to the Queen. At ten o’clock he signed the Decrees, the refusal of which were thought to be the political cause of the tumult. At midnight could be heard at last the regular marching of drilled men: La Fayette had arrived with 20,000 from Paris—not soldiers, if you will, men of but three months’ training, but in uniform, capable of formation and well armed—the Militia of Paris.

So profound was the mental distance between the surroundings of the King and the leaders of the reform that not a few at Court feared this relieving force, thinking that such a man as La Fayette might be tempted to capture the Monarchy with it and to betray it to the mob! They understood him little. He showed that night some statesmanship, great activity, and an admirable devotion to duty: it was his judgment that failed. He judged falsely of what the crowd were capable; he underestimated his countrymen, and he judged falsely of what his Militia could do; he over-estimated uniform and an imperfect drill. He urged that the regular troops, the pressure upon whom after all these hours was now almost intolerable, should be withdrawn; he further urged that he should be permitted with his Militia and with some few of the Guard to police the open spaces and to protect the palace.

His advice—the advice of the only man with a large armed force behind him—was accepted. By two o’clock there was silence and, as it was thought, security. Men slept as they could in such shelter as they might find or in the open. Far off there was the glare of a fire, where, in the midst of the crowd, a wounded horse had been killed and was roasting for food. The hubbub within the palace had died down; nothing was heard but the rhythmic clank of a sentry, or, as the hours passed, the challenge of a relief. The Queen also slept.

What followed has been told a thousand times. Her great bedroom looked east and south; it was the chief room in her wing, which, just beyond the central Court, corresponded to the King’s upon the northern side. From that room to the Council Chamber and to the King’s private apartments there were three ways: the way by the main gallery of mirrors which her household took upon Sunday mornings and on all sorts of grand occasions to join the King for High Mass; a second shorter way through little rooms at the back, which were her own private cabinets; and, thirdly, a secret passage worked now in the thickness of a wall, now in the space between two floors, and leading directly from the King’s room to her own.

All that afternoon and evening the new strength of her character had conspicuously appeared. Her friends, her enemies remarked it equally. There was something almost serene in her during these first experiences of peril; but they were to grow far more severe. Her children she had sent into the King’s wing. She was assured of peace at least until morning, and she slept.[^[15]]

[15]. Fersen was in the palace that night. It has been affirmed that he was with her. The story is certainly false.

Further along than the tall chapel whose roof so dominates Versailles, towards what is now the limit of the Hotel of the Reservoirs, in the Court which is called that of the Opera House, one of the great iron gates which gave entry into the palace grounds stood open on that gusty night of rain. A single sentinel, chosen from the Militia, stood before it. By this gate not a few of the crowd found their way into the palace gardens, and, coming to the southern wing, vaguely knew, though the interior of the place was doubtful to them, that they stood beneath the windows of the Queen.

Marie Antoinette had slept perhaps three hours when she awoke to hear cries and curses against her name, and staring in the bewildered moment which succeeds the oblivion of sleep she saw that it was dawn. Then next she heard somewhere, confused, far off, in the centre of the building, a noise of thousands and their cries. Her maid threw a petticoat upon her and a mantle, and delayed her a perilous moment that she might have stockings on as she fled. She made for the private rooms that would take her to the King’s wing, when, as the noise of the invading mob grew louder and their leaders (missing her door) poured on clamouring to find and to kill her, one of her Guards half-opened the door of her room and cried, “Save the Queen!” The butt of a musket felled him: the Queen was already saved.

The violence of those who thus poured past her door found no victim. She had run through her little library and boudoir, knocked at the door of the Œil de Bœuf and had it hurriedly opened to her; she had knocked and knocked and some one had opened the door fearfully and shut it again when she had passed through. She saw the Œil de Bœuf barricaded. A handful of the Guard went desperately piling up chairs, sofas and foot-stools against the outer doors, while she slipped through to the King’s room. He meanwhile, as the assault on the palace had awakened him also, had run along the secret passage to her room, and, seeing it empty, had come back to find her in his own.