Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

According to the Marquis de Bouillé, Gustavus should have been the King of France, and Louis XVI. King of Sweden. "As the sovereign of France, Gustavus would have been, beyond all doubt, one of its greatest kings. He would have preserved that beautiful realm from a revolution; he would have governed with glory and with splendor.... Louis XVI., on the other hand, placed on the throne of Sweden, would have obtained the respect and esteem of that simple people by his moral and religious virtues, his economy, his spirit of justice, and his good and benevolent sentiments. He would have contributed to the happiness of the Swedes, who would have wept above his tomb; whereas both these monarchs perished at the hands of their subjects. But the designs of Providence are impenetrable, and we ought, in respect and silence, to obey its unalterable decrees."

The Jacobins of Paris, who affected to despise the projects of Gustavus III., showed how much they had feared him by the mad joy they displayed on learning of his death. They lavished praises on "Brutus Ankarstroem." Although it had been committed by the nobles, there was a certain reminiscence of the French Revolution about the assault. In their secret meetings the conspirators had agreed to carry around on pikes the heads of Gustavus's principal friends, "in the French style," as was said in those days. Count de Lilienhorn, brought up, nourished, and drawn from poverty and obscurity by Gustavus, and overwhelmed to the last moment by the benefits of the generous monarch, explained his monstrous ingratitude and the part he had taken in the attack, by saying he had been led astray by the idea of commanding the National Guards of Stockholm after the Revolution, and playing the same part as Lafayette. The Girondin ministry attained to power in France a few days after Gustavus had been struck down in Sweden. There was no connecting link between the two facts; but at Paris, as at Stockholm, the cause of kings sustained a terrible repulse. The tragic death of their faithful friend must have caused Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette some painful forebodings concerning their own fate. The murder of Gustavus was the first of a series of great catastrophes. The pistol of the Swedish regicide heralded the blade of the Parisian guillotine. The 16th of March was the prelude of the 21st of January.

V.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MADAME ROLAND.

The moment is at hand when a woman of the middle class, born in humble circumstances, is about to make her appearance on the scene of politics; a woman who, after living in obscurity during thirty-eight years, was to become famous in a few days, and attract the attention of all France first and afterwards that of Europe entire. No figure is more curious to study than hers, and it is not surprising that of late years it has tempted men of great merit, such as MM. Daubant and Faugère, whose publications have shed great light on the Egeria of the Girondins.

At every epoch of history there are certain women who become as it were living symbols, and sum up in their own persons the passions, prejudices, and illusions of their time. They reflect at once its vices and its virtues, its qualities and its defects. Such was Madame Roland. All the distinctive characteristics of the close of the eighteenth century are resumed in her: ardent enthusiasm, generous ideals, aspiration towards progress, passion for liberty, heroic courage in view of persecution, captivity, and death; an absence of religious faith, an implacable vanity, a thirst for emotions, plagiarism of antiquity, declamatory language and sentiments, and childish imitation of Greece and Rome. Nothing is more interesting than to analyze the conceptions of this mind, count the pulsations of this heart, and surprise the inmost secrets of a woman whose psychological importance is as considerable as her place in history. Intellectually as well as morally, Madame Roland is the daughter of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; socially she is the personification of that third estate which, having been nothing, wished at first to be something and afterwards to be all; politically, she is by turns the heroine and the victim of the Revolution, which, under pretext of liberty, engendered tyranny, which used the guillotine and perished by the guillotine, and which after dreaming of light expired in mire and blood.

How was it that this little bourgeoise, the daughter of Philipon the engraver, a man midway between an artisan and an artist, whose very origin seemed to remove her so far from any political rôle, attained to high renown? What influences formed this woman whose qualities were masculine? Whence was drawn the inspiration of this siren, destined to be taken in her own snares and die the victim of her own incantations? A rapid glance at the earliest years of Marie-Jeanne Philipon, the future Madame Roland, is enough to explain her passions and her hopes, her errors and her talents, her rages and her enthusiasms.

She was born in Paris, March 18, 1754, of an intelligent but frivolous father, and a simple, devoted, honestly commonplace mother. From infancy she felt herself superior to those by whom she was surrounded. Thence sprang an unmeasured pride and a continual hunger to produce an impression. The infant prodigy preluded the female politician. Speaking of herself in her Memoirs, she becomes ecstatic over the child who "read serious works, explained very well the circles of the celestial globe, used crayons and the burin, found at eight years that she was the best dancer in an assembly of young persons older than herself," and who, nevertheless, "was often summoned to the kitchen to make an omelette, clean the vegetables, or skim the pot." She admires her own willingness to descend to domestic cares: "I was never out of my element," she says; "I could make soup as skilfully as Philopoemen could chop wood; but no one, observing me, could imagine that this was suitable employment." Still speaking of herself, she celebrates "the little person who on Sundays went to church or out walking in a spick-and-span costume whose appearance was fully sustained by her demeanor and her language." She calls attention to the contrast by which, on week-days, the same child went out alone, in a little cloth frock, to buy parsley and salad at a short distance from home. "It must be owned," she adds, "that I did not like this very well; but I did not show it, and I had the art of doing my errands in such a way as to find some pleasure in it. I united such great politeness to a certain dignity, that the fruit-seller or other person of the sort, took pleasure in serving me first, and even those who came before me thought this proper."