XIV. 1793. CHAP. calamities which have befallen him. Let him ask on his knees the life of his mother: childhood can pray; it can pray, when as yet it knows not the calamity which it would avert." But her efforts were in vain. On the 14th October Marie Antoinette was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. 30. Trial of the Queen. Oct. 14. An immense crowd assembled to witness her trial. The spectacle of a QUEEN being tried by her subjects was as yet new in the history of the world. The populace, how much soever accustomed to sanguinary scenes, were strongly excited by this event. Sorrow and confinement had whitened her once beautiful hair; her figure and air still commanded the admiration of all who beheld her; her cheeks, pale and emaciated, were occasionally tinged with a vivid colour, at the mention of those she had lost. Out of deference to her husband's memory, rather than from her own inclination, she pleaded to the court. Their interrogatories were of no avail; her answers, like those of the King, were clear, distinct, and unequivocal. As the form of examining witnesses was necessary, the prosecutors called the Count d'Estaing, who commanded the military at Versailles on the 5th October 1789. But though the Queen had been his political opponent, he had too high a sense of honour to tell any thing but the truth, and spoke only of her heroism on that trying occasion, and the noble resolution she had expressed in his presence to die with her husband, rather than obtain life by leaving him. Manuel, notwithstanding his hostility to the court during the Legislative Assembly, declared he could not depone to one fact against the accused. The venerable Bailly was next brought in: he now beheld the fruits of his democratic enthusiasm, and wept when he saw the Queen. When asked if he knew "the woman Capet," he turned with a melancholy air to his sovereign, and profoundly bowing his head, said, Yes, I know Madame." He then declared that he could say nothing against her, and that 66 XIV. 1793. all the pretended accounts extracted from the young CHAP. prince, relative to the journey to Varennes, were false. The Jacobins were furious at his testimony, and, from the violence of their language, he easily anticipated the fate which they reserved for himself. Recourse was * then had to the testimony of other witnesses. The monsters Hébert and Simon were examined; but what they had to declare amounted to nothing but proofs of the piety and affectionate disposition of the Queen and the Princess Elizabeth. At last Hébert deponed that the Dauphin had informed him that he had been initiated into improper practices by his mother; the Queen, overwhelmed with horror at the atrocious falsehood, remained silent. A juryman having insisted that she should answer, "If I have not hitherto spoken," said she, "it is because nature refused to answer to such an accusation, brought against a mother." Turning to the audience with inexpressible dignity, she added—"I appeal to x. 250, 251. all the mothers who hear me, whether such a thing is 375. possible."1 "Abash'd the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is; and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely - saw and pined His loss but chiefly to find here observed His lustre visibly impair'd; yet seem'd It was of no avail; notwithstanding the eloquent and The chief facts deponed to by Hébert were "Qu'il a trouvé un livre d'église à elle appartenant, dans lequel était un de ces signes contre-révolutionnaires, consistant en un cœur enflammé, traversé par une flèche, sur lequel était écrit, 'Jesu, miserere nobis.' Une autre fois il trouva dans la chambre d'Elizabeth un chapeau qui fut reconnu pour avoir appartenu à Louis Capet: cette découverte ne lui permit plus de douter qu'il existât parmi ses collègues quelques hommes dans le cas de se dégrader au point de servir la tyrannie. *** Qu'il n'y avait pas même à douter, par ce que dit le fils Capet, qu'il n'y eût un acte incestueux entre la mère et le fils,” [a child of eight years old!] Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire, No. 24, p. 95, 96; and Hist. Parl. xxix. 354, 355. + Paradise Lost, iv. 845. Bull, du Trib. Rev. No. 24, 25, pp. 95, 98. xxix. 354, 372. Lac. Th. v. 3, 4, XIV. 1793. CHAP. she wrote a letter to the Princess Elizabeth, worthy to be placed beside the testament of Louis. "To you, my sister," said she, "I address myself for the last time. I have been condemned, not to an ignominious death; it is so letter to the only to the guilty; but to rejoin your brother. Innocent, Elizabeth. like him, I hope to emulate his firmness at the last hour. 31. Her last Princess 1 Duchesse d'Angoulême, 134. Lac. x. 259. Let them I weep only for my children I hope that one day, when When led out for execution, she was dressed in white. *The authenticity of this letter is placed beyond a doubt. It was taken as soon as written to Robespierre; found after his death among his papers by Courtois, and discovered among the latter's papers in 1815, when these were searched by order of government. A fac-simile of it is annexed to the Duchesse d'Angoulême's narrative.-See Biographie Universelle, xxvii. 88, (MARIE ANTOINETTE.) CHAP. 1793. 32. Oct. 16. a chariot, with her arms tied behind her back, she was conducted by a long circuit to the place of execution, which was on the Place Louis XV., now the Place de la Révolution, where her husband had perished. A con- Her exestitutional priest was seated by her side. Thirty thousand cution. armed men lined the streets, and ten times that number gazed on the spectacle. Her air, like that of Charlotte Corday, was calm and serene. She spoke little, but gazed with an expression of interest on the numerous revolutionary names and signs which had so altered the character of the metropolis since she last saw it. When the chariot stopped in the Place Louis XV., she turned her eyes to the Tuileries, once the scene of her joys, and a bright flush suffused her countenance, which soon gave place to the former pallid hue. The people, roused by revolutionary emissaries, raised savage shouts of joy as she moved along; the Queen, with a serene look, indicating pity rather than suffering, bore that last expression of popular fury. When the procession reached the fatal spot in the centre of the Place Louis XV., she ascended with a firm step the scaffold, and at the top of the stair trode accidentally on the foot of the executioner. Trib. Rev. "Pardon me, sir," said she; "I did not do it intention- 128. Prudally." Her last words were, "O God! pardon my de Paris. enemies. Farewell, my beloved children! I am about to Lac. x. 261. join your father!" She then calmly resigned herself to 107. Th. v. the executioners: her countenance was illuminated by an Souv. de la expression of Christian hope; and the daughter of the 68. Cæsars died with a firmness that did honour to her race.1 Thus perished, at the age of thirty-nine, Marie Antoi * Now the Place Louis XV. +"En montant à l'échafaud, Marie Antoinette mit par mégarde le pied sur celui du citoyen Samson, et l'exécuteur des jugemens en ressentit assez de douleur pour s'écrier, 'Ah!' Elle se retourna en lui disant, Monsieur, je vous demande excuse: je ne l'ai pas fait exprès.'" Prudhomme's account of the execution of the Queen is far the most minute; and as he was a furious Republican, and ally of Danton's, it is liable to no suspicion.-See PRUDHOMME'S Révolutions de Paris, No. 212, p. 97. This incident attracted so much notice, that it formed the subject of an engraving executed at the time, and with these words at its foot. 1 Bull. du No. 33, p. hom. Rév. Toul. iv. 337. Duval, Terreur, iv. XIV. 1793. 33. Her cha racter. in Solon. CHAP. nette, Queen of France. Called in early life to the first throne in Europe, surrounded by a splendid court and a flattering nobility, blessed with an affectionate husband and promising family, she seemed to have approached, as nearly as the uncertainty of life will admit, to the limits of human felicity. She died, after years of suffering and anguish, broken by captivity, subdued by misfortune, bereft of her children, degraded from her throne, on the scaffold, where recently before her husband had perished. History has not recorded a more terrible instance of reverse of fortune, or one more illustrative of the wisdom of the ancient saying, "that none should be 1 Plutarch pronounced happy till the day of his death."1* Her character has come comparatively pure and unsullied out of the revolutionary furnace. An affectionate daughter and a faithful wife, she preserved in the two most corrupted courts of Europe the simplicity and affections of domestic life. If in early youth her indiscretion and familiarity were such as prudence would condemn, in later years her spirit and magnanimity were such as justice must admire. She was more fitted for the storms of adversity than the sunshine of prosperity. Sometimes ambitious and overbearing in the earlier years of her reign, it was the sufferings of her later days that drew forth the nobler parts of her character. The worthy descendant of Maria Theresa, she would have died in the field combating her enemies, rather than live on the throne subject to their control. Years of misfortune quenched her spirit, but did not lessen her courage; in the solitude of the Temple, she discharged, with exemplary fidelity, every duty to her husband and her children, and bore a reverse of fortune, unparalleled even in that age of calamity, with a heroism that never was surpassed.2 Her marriage to Louis was considered at the time as 2 Toul. iv. 108, 109. *The same sentiment is finely expressed by Euripides-- Πριν ἄν θανοντος τὴν τελευταίαν ἴδης Όπως περασας ἡμέραν ἥξει κατω.” EURIPIDES, Andromache, 100–102. |