Maria Antoinette / Makers of History

by John S. C. Abbott

Trial and Execution of Maria Antoinette.

1793

Sufferings of the queen.
Announcement of her husband's death.

While the king was suffering upon the guillotine, the queen, with Madame Elizabeth and the children, remained in their prison, in the endurance of anguish as severe as could be laid upon human hearts. The queen was plunged into a continued succession of swoons, and when she heard the booming of the artillery, which announced that the fatal ax had fallen and that her husband was headless, her companions feared that her life was also, at the same moment, to be extinguished. Soon the rumbling of wheels, the rolling of heavy pieces of cannon, and the shouts of the multitude penetrating through the bars of her cell, proclaimed the return of the procession from the scene of death. The queen was extremely anxious to be informed of all the details of the last moments of the king, but her foes refused her even this consolation.

Cruel decree.
Maria's defense of her boy.
The dauphin's cell.

Days and nights now lingered slowly along while the captives were perishing in monotonous misery. The severity of their imprisonment was continually increased by new deprivations. No communications from the world without were permitted to reach their ears. Shutters were so arranged that even the sky was scarcely visible, and no employment whatever was allowed them to beguile their hours of woe. About four months after the death of the king, a loud noise was heard one night at the door of their chamber, and a band of armed men came tumultuously in, and read to the queen an order that her little son should be entirely separated from her, and imprisoned by himself. The poor child, as he heard this cruel decree, was frantic with terror, and, throwing himself into his mother's arms, shrieked out, "O mother! mother! mother! do not abandon me to those men. They will kill me as they did papa." The queen was thrown into a perfect delirium of mental agony. She placed her child upon the bed, and, stationing herself before him, with eyes glaring like a tigress, and with almost superhuman energy, declared that they should tear her in pieces before they should touch her poor boy. The officers were subdued by this affecting exhibition of maternal love, and forbore violence. For two hours she thus contended against all their solicitations, until, entirely overcome by exhaustion, she fell in a swoon upon the floor. The child was then hurried from the apartment, and placed under the care of a brutal wretch, whose name, Simon, inhumanity has immortalized. The unhappy child threw himself upon the floor of his cell, and for two days remained without any nourishment. The queen abandoned herself to utter despair. Madame Elizabeth and Maria Theresa performed all the service of the chamber, making the beds, sweeping the room, and attending upon the queen. No importunities on the part of Maria Antoinette could obtain for her the favor of a single interview with her child.

The queen summoned to the Conciergerie.
Painful partings.

Three more months passed slowly away, when, early in August, the queen was aroused from her sleep at midnight by armed men, with lanterns, bursting into her room. With unfeeling barbarity, they ordered her to accompany them to the prison of the Conciergerie, the most dismal prison in Paris, where those doomed to die awaited their execution. The queen listened, unmoved, to the order, for her heart had now become callous even to woe. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at the feet of the officers, and most pathetically, but unavailingly, implored them not to deprive them of their only remaining solace. The queen was compelled to rise and dress in the presence of the wretches who exulted over her abasement. She clasped her daughter for one frantic moment convulsively to her heart, covered her with embraces and kisses, spoke a few words of impassioned tenderness to her sister, and then, as if striving by violence to throw herself from the room, she inadvertently struck her forehead a severe blow against the low portal of the door. "Did you hurt you?" inquired one of the men. "Oh no!" was the despairing reply, "nothing now can further harm me."

The Conciergerie.
Loathsome apartments of the queen.

A few lights glimmered dimly from the street lamps as the queen entered the carriage, guarded by soldiers, and was conveyed through the somber streets to her last earthly abode. The prison of the Conciergerie consists of a series of subterranean dungeons beneath the floor of the Palais de Justice. More damp, dark, gloomy dens of stone and iron the imagination can not conceive. Down the dripping and slippery steps she was led, groping her way by the feeble light of a tallow candle, until she approached, through a labyrinth of corridors, an iron door. It grated upon its hinges, and she was thrust in, two soldiers accompanying her, and the door was closed. It was midnight. The lantern gave just light enough to show her the horrors of her cell. The floor was covered with mud and water, while little streams trickled down the stone walls. A miserable pallet in one corner, an old pine table and one chair, were all the comforts the kingdom of France could afford its queen.