Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

XXXI.

THE RESULTS OF THE COMBAT.

The results of the combat were, at the Assembly, the decree of suspension, or, rather, the decree of deposition; at the Tuileries, devastation, massacre, and conflagration. From the moment when he ordered his last defenders to lay down their arms, Louis XVI. was but the phantom of a king.

While the fight was going on, Robespierre had remained in hiding; Marat had not quitted the bottom of a cellar. Even Danton, the man of "audacity," did not show himself until after the last shot had been fired. But now that fate had declared for the Revolution, those who were trembling and hesitating a moment since, were those who talked the loudest. Louis XVI., who had been dreaded a few minutes ago, was insulted and jeered at. The National Assembly, royalist in the morning, became the accomplice of the republicans during the day. It perceived, moreover, that the 10th of August was aimed at it not less than at the throne, and that its own downfall would be contemporaneous with that of royalty.

Huguenin, the president of the new Commune, came boldly to the bar, and said to the deputies: "The people is your sovereign as well as ours!" Another individual, likewise at the bar, exclaimed in a menacing tone: "For a long time the people has asked you to pronounce the deposition, and you have not even yet pronounced the suspension! Know that the Tuileries is on fire, and that we shall not extinguish it until the vengeance of the people has been satisfied!" Vergniaud, who in the morning had promised the King the support of the Assembly, no longer even attempted to stem the revolutionary tide. He came down from the president's chair, and went to a desk to write the decree which should give a legislative form to the will of the insurrection. In virtue of this decree, which Vergniaud read from the tribune, and which was unanimously adopted, the royal power was suspended and a National Convention convoked. In reality this was a veritable deposition, and yet the Assembly still hesitated to give the last shock which should uproot the royal tree that had sheltered beneath its branches so many faithful generations. It declared that in default of a civil list, a salary should be granted to the King during his suspension; that Louis XVI. and his family should have a palace, the Luxembourg, for a residence, and that he should be appointed governor of the Prince-royal.

Concerning this, Madame de Staël has remarked in her Considerations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française: "Ambition for power mingled with the enthusiasm of principles in the republicans of 1792, and several among them offered to maintain royalty if all the ministerial places were given to their friends.... The throne they attacked served to shelter them, and it was not until after they had triumphed that they found themselves exposed before the people." What the Girondins wanted was merely a change in the ministry; it was not a revolution. Vergniaud felt that he had been distanced. When he read the act of deposition, his voice was sad, his attitude dejected, and his action feeble. Did he foresee that the King and himself would die at the same place, on the same scaffold, and only nine months apart?

Louis XVI. listened to the invectives launched against him, and to the decree depriving him of royal power, without a change of color. At the very moment when the vote was taken, he bent towards Deputy Coustard, who sat beside the box of the Logographe, and said with the greatest tranquillity: "What you are doing there is not very constitutional." Impassive, and speaking of himself as of a king who had lived a thousand years before, he leaned his elbows on the front of the box, and looked on, like a disinterested spectator, at the lugubrious spectacle that was unrolled before him.

Marie Antoinette, on the contrary, was shuddering. So long as the combat lasted, a secret hope had thrilled her. But when she saw them bringing to the Assembly and laying on the table the jewel-cases, trinkets, and portfolios which the insurgents had just taken from her bedroom at the Tuileries; when she heard the victorious cries of the rioters; when Vergniaud's voice sounded in her ears like a funeral knell—she could hardly contain her grief and indignation. For one instant she closed her eyes. But presently she haughtily raised her head.