The Queen`s Confession (24 page)

He looked pale but resolute.

“I find it hard to bear when the people are against us,” he said.

Then I thought of that moment when we had known we were King and Queen of France and how we had both cried out that we were too young, and I forgot the Trianon;

I forgot everything but the need to stand beside him, to support him, to will him to be strong. I took his hand and he pressed my fingers.

There is no time to be lost,” he said.

“Action, prompt action, is necessary.” Then the old look of self-doubt was in his face.

“The right action,” he added.

The Princes of Beauvau and de Poix were in the chateau and he sent for them poor substitutes for Maurepas and Turgot. He briefly explained the situation. He said: “I will send a message to Turgot, and then we shall have to act.”

I knew he was praying silently that the ac don he took would be the right one. And I prayed with him.

He sat down and wrote to Turgot:

Versailles is attacked. You can count on my firmness. I have ordered the guards to the market place. I am pleased with the precautions you have taken in Paris, but it is what could happen there that alarms me most. You are right to arrest the people of whom you speak, but when you have them remember I wish there to be no haste and many questions. I have just given orders what shall be done here, and for the markets and mills of the neighbourhood. ” I stayed with him, and I was gratified that that seemed to please him.

“What alarms me is,” he said, ‘that this should appear to be an organised riot. It is not the people. The situation is not as bad as

that. There is nothing that we could not set 176 co rights given time. But this is organised planned the people are being incited against us. Why? “

I thought of how the people had cheered me when I first went to Paris and Monsieur de Brissac had said two hundred thousand people had fallen in love with me; I thought of the people cheering us in the Bois de Boulogne.

“The people love us, Louis,” I said.

“We may have our enemies, but they are not the people.”

He nodded, and again I realised by the way he looked at me that he was glad I was there.

That was a terrible day. I could eat nothing; I felt faint and slightly sick. The waiting was terrible, and when I heard the sounds of shouting approaching the chateau I was almost relieved.

That was my first glimpse of an angry mob. There they were in the grounds of the chateau unkempt, in rags, bran dishing sticks and howling abuse. I stood a little way back from the window watching.

Someone threw something; I could see it on the balcony. It looked like mouldy bread.

Louis said he would speak to them, and bravely he stepped on to the balcony. There was a moment’s silence, and he cried: “My good people .
But his voice was drowned in their shouting. He turned to me and I saw the tears in his eyes.

“You tried. You did your best,” I assured him, but I could not comfort him. He was sad and depressed, but he was like a different man from the Louis I had known before. There was a resolution about him. I knew that he would not be afraid whatever happened, and that he had one purpose; to bring cheap bread to his people.

I saw the guards come into the courtyard led by the Prince de Beauvau.

No sooner had he appeared than the mob turned on him; they threw flour at him the precious flour needed for bread and he was covered in it from head to foot.

“We shall march on the chateau,” cried a voice in the crowd.

The Prince cried: “What do you want the price of bread to be?”

“Two sous,” was the answer. 177 “Then two sous shall it be,” said the Prince. There was a wild shout of triumph and the people turned from the chateau to rush to the bakers demanding bread at two sous. Thus ended the riots at Versailles; but several of those who had been arrested turned out to be not starving peasants at all but men of substance—one of them was Artois’s chief cellarer; and some of the sour bread of which the people had complained was picked up and turned out to be bread mixed with ashes. This was very disturbing indeed. Louis wrote at once to Turgot:

We are peaceful now. The riot was beginning to be violent but the troops calmed them. The Prince de Beauvau asked them why they had come to Versailles and they replied that they had no bread. I have decided not to go out today, not through fear but so that all may be calm and settle down. Monsieur de Beauvau tells me that a foolish compromise was made which was to let them have bread at two sous.

There was no other thing to do, he says, but let them have it at this or its present price. The bargain is made now but precautions should be made to prevent their believing they can make laws. Give me your advice on this Turgot returned at once to Versailles.

“Our consciences are clear,” he told the King; ‘but the current price of bread must be restored or there will be disaster. ” In spite of Turgot’s precautions there were riots in Paris;

the Chief of Police Lenoir was dilatory; it may have been that’ he did not wish to show himself against the rioters.

This was all very alarming—Lenoir refusing to do his duty, and more bread being found which had been turned mouldy by a special process.

Turgot acted promptly and dismissed Lenoir, replacing him by a man named Albert who was a supporter of his and immediately went into action. Arrests were made and order was restored; the entire Parlement was summoned to Versailles, where the King received them.

“I must stop this dangerous brigandage,” he said.

“It could quickly become rebellion. I am determined that neither my

good town of Paris nor my kingdom shall suffer. I rely on 178 your fidelity and submission when I am determined to take measures which ensure that during my reign I shall not have to take them again.”

He was determined, as he had told me, before receiving the Parlement, that order should be brought back to his kingdom, and that the real culprits of this rising should be discovered and dealt with.

But the riots in Paris continued; and once again those who were arrested proved to be not poor people in need of bread but men and women with money in their pockets.

Louis was very distressed.

“This is a plot,” he told me, a plot against us. That is what disturbs me so. “

“But you are behaving like a true King, Louis. I have heard it said again and again. They tell me that the manner in which you spoke to the Parlement has won everyone’s admiration.”

“I always find it easier to talk to fifty men than to one,” he said with his shy smile.

I cried: “You will discover who made this plot, and then all will be well. I think the French are happy to understand that they have a strong King whom they can trust.”

He was delighted and murmured: “You jump to conclusions. It is not all over yet.”

Nor was it. As he and I passed out of his room we saw a nonce pinned on the door. I read it and gasped. It said:

“If the price of bread does not go down and the Ministry is not changed, we will set fire to the four corners of the Chateau of Versailles.”

I stared at it in horror. I looked at my husband, who had turned pale.

“Louis,” I whispered, it is as though they hate us. “

It is not the people! ” he cried.

“I will not believe it is the people 1’ But he was shaken. And so was I. It was like a cold wind blowing through the palace.

Albert reported that he had made many arrests. A wig maker and a gauze-maker had been caught stealing and it was decided to make an

example of them. They were hanged 179 on two gallows eighteen feet high so that they could be an example to the rioters.

Louis was distressed.

“I wish they could find the ringleaders,” he said again and again.
I do not wish the people who have only been led away to be punished. ” If he could he would have pardoned those two men, but Turgot insisted that there must be an example, and certainly the hanging of these two men sobered the people. The rioting died down; the insurrection ” La Guerre des Farines’ was over.

It was clear that some organisation, some secret band of men, was using the grain shortage to build a revolution. Fortunately the resolution of the King and the prompt action of Turgot, the replacement of Lenoir by Albert and the solidarity of the Parlement, had avoided that.

Everyone was speculating as to who could have been behind it. Some said it was the Prince de Conti, whom Max had so offended when he had visited us. It was whispered that he hated me and my family so much that he wished to bring down the Monarchy.

It seemed ridiculous, but it was true that the riots had started in Pontoise, and he had a house there.

There were all sorts of whispers; I listened for a while. I even heard that Conti was a member of a secret organisation suspected of all kinds of subversive activities.

We ought to have been thankful for a grim warning; we should not have rested until we found out the truth of these rumours. Surely it could not have been difficult had we really tried.

But we were all too thankful that the guerre des farines was over, to wish to resurrect causes. We wanted to forget it.

It is very surprising and so comforting to be so well received after the revolt and in spite of the price of bread, which is still dear.

But it is characteristic of the French to be carried away by evil suggestions and then return immediately to good sense. When we hear the people’s acclamations and see these proofs of their affection, we are all the more committed to work for their good.

MAEIE ANTOINETTE TO MARIA THERESA

7 am sorry that you could not share the satisfaction I have felt here.

It is my duty to work for a people who give me so much happiness. I shall give myself up to this absolutely.

LOUIS XVI TO MAUBEPAS

Coronation

A month had elapsed since the last of the bread riots and everyone was talking about the coronation. Coronations were rare events with such long-lived Kings as Louis XIV and Louis XV, both of whom had reigned for so many years. Louis XVI was dreading it, of course, for it was the sort of occasion he preferred to avoid. He would be extremely clumsy at the most significant moments; and he hated dressing up.

Moreover the ceremony would be archaic, the same that had been carried out since the earliest days of the French monarchy. Louis would have given a great deal to escape it.

Mercy and my mother were hoping that I would be crowned too, and to tell the truth I did not share my husband’s horror of the ceremony. I should have been in my element, a glittering figure, receiving the homage of my subjects, and was secretly disappointed when it was decided that there was to be no coronation for me.

“It would mean even more expense,” said Louis, ‘at a 181 time when there is urgent need for economy everywhere. There will be Clothilde’s wedding and the lying-in of Artois’s wife . “

He looked sheepish; the delicate subject was being raised again. I felt unhappy too. Artois was the first of the brothers to be a father.

How I envied my sister-in-law 1 I had thrown myself wildly into making changes at Le Trianon, hoping to forget my envy. Lucky, lucky woman!

What did it matter if she were small and ugly and squinted and had a long thin nose? She was to be a mother!

“So,” said Louis, ‘you will not be crowned with me. I know you do not wish it. And how I wish that I could avoid the fuss. “

But it was decided that there must be a coronation, so on the 5th of June I with my brothers-and sisters-in-law left Rheims. It was midnight when we saw the city in moonlight. The people leaned out of their windows—those who were not lining the streets—and they cheered us wildly; they were almost as enthusiastic as the people of Paris had been when I had first officially entered their city.

As we had arrived the day before the King, I was thrilled to see his entry. His carriage was eighteen feet high and we saw him receive the keys of the city from the Due de Bourbon, who was the Governor of Champagne.

Long before the King was due to arrive at the Cathedral I had taken my place in a gallery near the high altar so that I could have a good view of the proceedings, and never before in my life had I been so moved.

I knew that at seven o’clock the quaint ceremony of bringing the King had begun and that the Bishops of Beauvais and Laon had headed the procession which had arrived at his apartments. The Grand Chorister then knocked on the door and was asked by the Grand Chamberlain: “What is your wish?”

“We wish the King,” was the answer.

The King sleeps. “

This little exchange was repeated twice and then the Bishop said: “We ask for Louis XVI, whom God has given us to be King.”

Then the door of the apartment would be opened and Louis would be seen lying on the state bed in all his gorgeous coronation robes.

Then after the blessing and sprinkling of holy water the journey to the Cathedral would begin.

I shall never forget seeing my husband as he came to the high altar.

He was in gold and crimson, his mantle was of silver cloth and his velvet cap decorated with diamonds and plumes. There were times when he, being so deeply conscious of his state, was indeed a King, dedicated, noble. I had glimpsed this during the guerre des farines when he had faced a murderous mob without fear. He might be shy of great gatherings, awkward in company, embarrassed by our situation in the bedchamber, but he was a brave man.

I watched the sprinkling from la sainte ampoule which had been handed down from the days of Clovis, the first King of the Pranks; and after that there followed the coronation oath. The sword was presented to the King and he knelt at the altar. Then he was prepared for the anointing and afterwards dressed in his robes of purple velvet decorated with fleurs-delis He sat on his throne while the crown of Charlemagne was placed on his head. I had never before seen such splendour. I kept thinking that that crown had been worn by all the Kings of France, and I thought of my grandfather who had been very young when it had been placed on his head young and so handsome, far more so than this present Louis; and I remembered him as I had last seen him, lying on his death-bed . his lips cracked, his eyes wild, and the horrible smell of death in the apartment