when the vast gardens where once Louis, the Grand Monarque, surrounded by his train of lords and ladies, moved majestic, “monarch of all he surveyed and of all who surveyed him,” are silent and deserted;—even now, Versailles must either belie its origin, or, considering itself as a fragment of the fallen monarchy, and no longer feeling the pride of power and wealth, must at least retain the poetical associations of regret and the sovereign charms of melancholy. By his answer to the Marquis de Brézé, Mirabeau had struck the very face of royalty.
By the taking of the Bastile, the people had struck it to the heart, paralyzed its nerves of action, and given it a death-blow. “But the monarch of France, from his palace at Versailles, heard the thunders of the distant cannonade, and yet inscribed upon his puerile journal, ‘Nothing!’”
“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad;” and the adage applies fitly to the French court during the six months preceding the overthrow. Never had the nobles been so haughty and domineering. Never had they looked upon the people with such supreme contempt. Their arrogance passed all bounds. Even Marie Antoinette exclaimed in terror, “This noblesse will ruin us!”
The Flanders regiment had been stationed at Versailles; and on the 1st of October a banquet was given to the officers at the palace. Wine was liberally supplied from the royal cellars, and was so liberally partaken of that the banquet became a scene of riot and disorder. The revolutionary movement was cursed intensely, and the national cockade trampled under foot. The tidings of this fête spread rapidly through Paris, exciting great indignation. The court was feasting; the people starving. Versailles was filled with rejoicing; Paris with mourning.
The morning of the 5th of October dawns dark, cold, and dreary. The people of Paris are starving. About a baker’s shop is a crowd of women and children, crying for bread. Bread is not to be had. “À Versailles, bonnes femmes!” cries a man passing by. “À Versailles! there is bread enough there, and to spare. À Versailles! the land of plenty, feasting, and revelry! À Versailles!” A young girl seizes a drum, and cries aloud, “Bread! bread!”
Soon a mob is collected; three or four hundred women presently increased to as many thousands. They follow their leader, echoing her cry, “Bread! bread!” On to the Hôtel de Ville they rush. But there is no bread there; and their cry is now, “À Versailles! À Versailles!” “We will give the men,” they exclaim, “a lesson in courage. If they cannot support and protect us, we will do it for ourselves.”
And so along beside the Tuileries, and through the Elysian Fields, rushes on this mighty mass, headlong towards Versailles. Couriers have been sent forward to warn the king and queen of the approaching peril. His Majesty, King Louis XVI., for want of something better to do, has gone to chase hares at Meudon. He is sent for, post haste, and returns to Versailles. “About seven hundred gentlemen were then in the palace, all in full dress, chapeau sous le bras, and armed only with dress swords. Some few had found pistols; and in that unmilitary fashion they declared themselves determined to defend the château if attacked.”
Five minutes after the king’s return, the women arrived, singing, “Vive Henri IV.!” and more like furies than suppliants. All the shops were instantly closed; drums beat to arms, the tocsin sounded, and the troops were drawn up on the Place d’Armes. Entrance to the courts of the palace was refused; but finally the women sent a deputation of fifteen to the king. He received them very graciously, and promised what they desired, so that they came out of the palace shouting, “Vive le roi!” and praising the goodness of the king to such an extent that their fellow-Amazons, in rage, would have strung them to the nearest lamp-posts had not the soldiers interfered.
At nine o’clock, news was brought that General de Lafayette, at the head of the National Guards and the Gardes Française, and followed by a crowd of the Parisian people, was on his way to Versailles. M. de Saint-Priest immediately sought the king, and urged him to leave the palace before their arrival. “The road is open,” he said; “a picket of the household troops is at the gate of the Orangery, and your Majesty, on horseback, at the head of an escort, can freely pass whithersoever you wish.”
Poor Louis! He would wait the course of events; not from courage to face whatever might happen, but from want of resolution to depart. Rightly had the queen called him “le pauvre homme.” In this hour of menacing danger she found no protector in her poor, miserably weak husband and king. But she needed none; for “she alone, among all women and all men, wore a face of courage, of lofty calmness and resolve this day. She alone saw clearly what she meant to do; and Theresa’s daughter dares do what she means, were all France threatening her: abide where her children are, where her husband is.”