The Girls' Book of Famous Queens

by Lydia Hoyt Farmer

A revolution! Aye, a revolution truly. And King Louis leaves his splendid, proud Versailles, and Queen Marie Antoinette bids sad adieu to Trianon. The royal diadem of France, torn from a kingly brow, is trampled in the dust, and the blood-red emblem of the Jacobins appears upon the gilded portals of the Tuileries Palace. Anarchy! confusion! chaos! Government, Philosophy, Religion,—all are hurled headlong in the dark abyss, and fury reigns supreme. But amid this overthrow of men and things, a daring soul arises who grasps the helm of state, and stands erect beneath the weight; who chains revolution in France, and unchains it in the rest of Europe; and who, having added to his name the brilliant synonymes of Rivoli, Jena, and Marengo, picks up the royal crown, and, burnishing it into imperial splendor, places it triumphantly upon his head, to found for a time a kind of Roman Empire,—himself the Cæsar of the nineteenth century.

MARIE-ANTOINETTE.

All the palace, all Vienna, was full of excitement. The loyal affection and sentimental lamentation of the inhabitants gave vent to themselves in cries of grief. For the fair young daughter of their empress, in whose coming exaltation they took the utmost pride, who was to do them such honor and service at the court of France, she whose bright face ever beamed with smiles, was, on this 21st of April, 1770, departing on her long journey, and, as many without much prophetic insight might have perceived, her difficult career. When the great coach rolled from the palace courtyard, the girl-bride covered her face with her hands, which yet could not conceal the tears that streamed through her slender fingers. Again and again she turned for a farewell look at the mother, the home, and the early friends, which she was never to see again. The carriage rolled away, and Marie Antoinette Jeanne Josèphe de Lorraine turned her back forever on the Prater and the Danube, Schönbrunn and the moated Laxenburg.

Spring-time in sunny France; the birds are singing merrily, the trees are putting forth their leaves, and all nature wears a look of happiness and joy. The Château de Compiègne is filled with guests,—a brilliant assemblage of the haute noblesse composing the court of Louis XV. Upon the terrace stands the king, and with him his three grandsons,—the Dauphin (Louis XVI.), Monsieur le Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.), and the Comte d’ Artois (Charles X.),—and an eager, anxious crowd surrounds them. All gaze in one direction, for Louis, the Dauphin, awaits his bride,—she who is to be the future queen of France. But little like a bridegroom looks the timid, fat Louis, upon this bright spring morning. He wears an air of resigned indifference, contrasting strongly with the eagerness of his Majesty, King Louis XV., who, notwithstanding his sixty years, makes a far more gallant knight than he. There is a cloud of dust upon the horizon; the avant-couriers arrive; the king and the Dauphin mount their horses, and with a numerous retinue ride forth to meet and welcome the approaching bride. And now the old state travelling carriage is in sight. Putting spurs to his horse, the king leads the way, and, hat in hand, rides up to the side of the cumbrous vehicle. The door flies open, and before him in all the freshness of her fifteen summers is Marie Antoinette Jeanne Josèphe de Lorraine, Archduchess of Austria. The introductions follow, and the young bride and her bashful fiancée are conducted back to Versailles, where, on the 16th of May, 1770, the nuptial benediction is pronounced by the Archbishop of Paris, in the chapel of the palace.

Then followed the fêtes, and notwithstanding the exchequer was in the usual chronic state of exhaustion, twenty millions of francs—a mighty sum for that period—was spent upon them.

“Fêtes magnifiques” they were termed, from their surpassing in splendor anything witnessed in France since the days of Louis le Grand. For weeks the public rejoicings continued.

On the 30th of May, they were to close with the fête of the Ville de Paris, and in the evening a display of illuminations and fireworks on the Place Louis XV. (now the Place de la Concorde) which were to surpass all that had preceded them. Thousands of people filled the square and all the approaching avenues. Most unfortunately, through some mismanagement, the scaffolding supporting the fireworks took fire and burned rapidly. No means were at hand for extinguishing the flames, and the terror-stricken multitude rushed in all directions. Crushing upon each other, hundreds were suffocated by the pressure. Those that fell were trampled to death. Groans and screams, and frantic cries for help that none could render, filled the air. Nothing, in fact, could be done until the fire had burnt itself out, and the extent of the calamity was ascertained. The Dauphin and Dauphiness, distressed at so sad a disaster, gave their entire year’s allowance towards mitigating the misery that had fallen upon many poor people; and the “fêtes magnifiques,” with all their splendor and rejoicing, ending thus in “lamentation, mourning, and woe,” seem to have been, as it were, a foreshadowing of the career of her for whom they had been given,—the unfortunate Marie Antoinette.

“It is the 10th of May, 1774,—a lovely evening following a bright spring day. The sun has sunk below the horizon; the brilliant hues of the western sky have faded into the dark shades of the advancing night, and the Château of Versailles, in its sombre grandeur, looms larger in the increasing gloom. On the terrace are saunterers in earnest conversation; carriages and horses and a throng of attendants in the marble court. A group of impatient pages, écuyers booted and spurred, an escort of the household troops, eager for an order to mount,—all are watching, with anxious eyes, the flickering glare of a candle that faintly illumines the window of a chamber in the château.”

In that chamber lies Louis, once the “well-beloved,” in the last stages of confluent small-pox. As the clock of Versailles tolls the hour of twelve, at midnight, the flame is extinguished; the king is dead! Louis XV. has breathed his last! Instantly all is movement and animation in the courtyard, while through the gilded galleries of Versailles resounds the cry, destined to be heard never again within its walls, “The king is dead! Long live the king!” as, with a noise like thunder, the courtiers rush from the antechamber of the dead monarch to the apartments of the Dauphin, to hail him king of France. This extraordinary tumult, in the silence of midnight, conveyed to Louis and Marie Antoinette the first intelligence that the crown of France had fallen upon their brows; and, overcome by the violence of their emotions, they fell upon their knees exclaiming, “O God! guide us, protect us; we are too young to govern!”