It was at length decided that the royal family, for safe keeping, should be imprisoned in the tower of the Temple. This massive, sombre building, in whose gloomy architecture were united the palace, the cloister, the fortress, and the prison, was erected and inhabited by the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages. Having been long abandoned it was now crumbling to decay. It was an enormous pile which centuries had reared near the site of the Bastille, and with its palace, donjon, towers, and garden, which was choked with weeds and the débris of crumbling walls, covered a space of many acres.
THE TEMPLE.
The main tower was one hundred and fifty feet high, nine feet thick at the base, surrounded by a wide, deep ditch, and inclosed by an immensely high wall. This tower was ascended by a very narrow flight of circular stairs, and was divided into four stories, each containing a bare, dismal room about thirty feet square. The iron doors to these rooms were so low and narrow that it was necessary to stoop almost double to enter them. The windows, which were but slits in the thick wall, were darkened by slanting screens placed over them, and were also secured by stout iron bars.
Such were the apartments which were now assigned to the former occupants of the Tuileries, Versailles, and Fontainebleau. It was a weary ride for the royal captives through the Place Vendôme and along the Boulevards to the Temple. An immense crowd lined the road. All the royal family, with Pétion, the mayor, occupied one carriage, and the procession moved so slowly that for two hours the victims were exposed to the gaze of the populace before the carriages rolled under the arches of the Temple. It was late in the afternoon when they left the Assembly, and the shades of night darkened the streets ere they reached the Temple.
The Assembly had surrendered the safe-keeping of the king to the Commune of Paris, and appropriated one hundred thousand dollars to meet the expenses of the royal family until the king should be brought to trial. Conscious that an army of nearly two hundred thousand men was within a few days' march of Paris, hastening to rescue the king, and that there were thousands of Royalists in the city, and tens of thousands in France, who were ready at any moment to lay down their lives to secure the escape of the monarch, and conscious that the escape of the king would not only re-enslave France, but consign every friend of the Revolution to the dungeon or the scaffold, they found it necessary to adopt the most effectual measures to hold the king securely. They, therefore, would no longer allow the friends of the king to hold free communication with him.
The Temple itself, by outworks, had been promptly converted into a fortress, and was strongly garrisoned by the National Guard. Twelve commissioners were without interruption to keep watch of the king's person. No one was allowed to enter the tower of the Temple without permission of the municipality. Four hundred dollars were placed in the hands of the royal family for their petty expenses. They were not intrusted with more, lest it might aid them to escape. A single attendant, the king's faithful valet Clery,[358] was permitted to accompany the captives. It does not appear that the authorities wished to add unnecessary rigor to the imprisonment. Thirteen cooks were provided for the kitchen, that their table might be abundantly supplied. One of these only was allowed to enter the prison and aid Clery in serving at the table, the expenses of which for two months amounted to nearly six thousand dollars.[359]
It was an hour after midnight when the royal family were led from the apartments of the Temple to which they had first been conducted to their prison in the tower. The night was intensely dark. Dragoons with drawn sabres marched by the side of the king, while municipal officers with lanterns guided their steps. Through gloomy and dilapidated halls, beneath massive turrets, and along the abandoned paths of the garden, encumbered with weeds and stones, they groped their way until they arrived at the portals of the tower, whose summit was lost in the obscurity of night. As in perfect silence the sad procession was passing through the garden, a valet-de-chambre of the king inquired in a low tone of voice whither the king was to be conducted.
"Thy master," was the reply, "has been used to gilded roofs. Now he will see how the assassins of the people are lodged."