THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
IN MEMORY OF
Professor Henry J. Quayle
PRESENTED BY
Mrs Fannie Q.
Mrs Annie Q. Hadley
Mrs Elizabeth Q. Flowers
THE YOUTH
DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
BY
IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND
\\ »
TRANSLATED BY ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN
WITH PORTRAIT
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1892
PC 1 57. 2-
COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
CONTENTS
PAGK
INTRODUCTION . . 1
FIRST PART THE CAPTIVITY
CHAPTER
I. THE TEMPLE TOWER 45
II. MADAME ELISABETH , 52
III. THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 68
IV. SOLITUDE 78
V. THE LAST DAYS OF Louis XVII 90
VI. THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 110
VII. NEW SEVERITIES. 135
VIII. THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA 142
IX. THE DEPARTURE FROM THE TEMPLE 149
SECOND PART THE EXILE
I. THE JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER 157
II. BASEL 164
III. VIENNA 170
IV. Louis XVIII 183
v
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGB
V. THE EMIGRES 192
VI. MITTAU 202
VII. THE ARRIVAL OF MARIE THERESE 215
VIII. THE MARRIAGE 223
IX. THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 236
X. THE DEPARTURE FROM MITTAU 247
XI. THE SOJOURN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 254
XII. THE SECOND SOJOURN AT MITTAU 268
XIII. HARTWELL 272
XIV. THE END OF THE EXILE . . 287
THE YOUTH
DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
THE YOUTH OF THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
INTRODUCTION
IF there are nations which have not glory enough, there are others which, as an offset, have too much. It may be said of French annals that in this respect they sin by excess. Our illustrious country has three legends, all of which — the legend of roy- alty, the republican legend, and the imperial legend — occupy many grand pages — pages which, how- ever, contradict each other and deprive our nation of that character of unity which is as essential to the life of nations as to that of individuals. The adage, "Happy are the nations that have no history," should not be taken literally. But the fact must be recognized that nations which have too much his- tory are not happy.
It is the misfortune of France that she has been divided against herself. United, she would have been able, as in the days of Louis XIV., to defy all Europe and repel every invasion. It is singular to
1
THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
note how successfully the smallest countries, pro- viding that all hearts beat in unison, resist the most powerful forces. Switzerland has been able to make itself respected by all conquerors. The Sun-King was never able to subjugate Holland. With the troops that he had been obliged to leave in Vendee, Napoleon might have been able to win the battle of Waterloo. If account be taken of our internal dis- sensions, it may be said that France has more than once been vanquished not so much by foreigners as by itself.
When one passes from the study of the first Empire to that of the Restoration, a new nation seems to have come into existence. Neither the flag nor the ideas, neither the passions nor the mem- ories, are the same. Two men of different countries are less unlike than an imperialist and a legitimist. What community of principle could exist between a volunteer of 1792 and a Chouan, between a grenadier of the Imperial Guard and a soldier of Conde's army ? To one Napoleon is a hero ; to the other he is a monster. To one Waterloo is a disaster; to the other, a victory. To one the Revolution is a deliver- ance; to the other it is the abomination of desolation. The same words do not mean the same things. What one calls fidelity the other calls treason. The selfsame act is characterized as virtuous or as crimi- nal, according as one looks at it from the point of view of one camp or the other. Between contradic- tions so violent as these the historian feels in some
INTRODUCTION
degree those anxieties which, during the Hundred Days, tormented Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave ; he needs a strict conscience and great calm- ness if he would preserve in his judgments that absolute impartiality in the absence of which history would be but a discredited pamphlet, like every- thing else that bases itself on purely partisan spirit.
These reflections occur to us as soon as we begin the third series of "The Women of the Tuileries." It will perhaps be said that we are inclined to attach an exaggerated importance to women. In our opinion they have too often been neglected in history. Without deep study of the character and life of Marie Antoinette it is impossible to under- stand the Old Regime or the Revolution ; and yet it is only within the last twenty years that history has become seriously interested in this most touching and interesting figure. M. Thiers gave hardly any pages to the Empress Josephine. Nevertheless, we think that, without that woman, Bonaparte would never have been the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy, First Consul, or Emperor. As to Marie Louise, feeble as her image seems at the first glance, we believe that her career illustrates both the culminating point and the decline of Napoleon better than any of the commentaries.
In later times history has made great progress. From science it has borrowed the processes of analysis and synthesis; from art, the feeling for the picturesque and local color. Michelet said:
THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
"History is a resurrection," and this motto has become the watch-word of his disciples. They have undertaken to revivify not only things, but persons; not only bodies, but souls. "In history," said Mgr. Dupanloup, " it is souls only that are interesting to me. Facts, common occurrences, riots, battles, victories, defeats, treaties, and all that sort of thing one is obliged to know, but all this amounts to little without the history of souls. It is really only the history of souls that touches and illumines." The developments of psychology ought, indeed, to inten- sify our application to the study of feminine char- acters. The new historic school, inaugurated by men of genius whose obscure disciple we are, has employed the methods of philosophy, painting, and the dramatic art. Considering that the life of peo- ples is a series of grandiose dramas, now brilliant and now dismal, it has undertaken to dispose the scenery and light up the stage, to bring to life again, not merely the principal actors, but the secondary ones and even the supernumeraries, and is persuaded that if local color is faithfully preserved, if descrip- tions are exact, if monuments and places where events took place appear plainly before the reader, if, especially, characters are studied conscientiously, an historical work, while adhering scrupulously to truth, may yet be made as attractive as a play, an historical romance, or a novel.
The period we are about to study might inspire an artist or a poet as well as an historian. We
INTRODUCTION
open our recital in the Prison of the Temple on the day when Marie Antoinette, leaving her daughter, her son, and her sister-in-law behind her, departed from it to the Conciergerie ; we shall end the tale at Goritz, in the chapel of the Franciscans, on the day when the Count of Chambord, buried at the side of Charles X. and the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, bore the white flag like a shroud into his tomb. There are captivities, exiles, revolutions, and assas- sinations in this history; dramas in which the characters are courtiers, soldiers, and the people; adventures that recall the heroines of Walter Scott ; tragedies in the manner of ^Eschylus and Sophocles ; hosannas and anathemas; smiles, tears, splendid fetes, and sombre scenes ; contrasts to describe which would require the powers of a Shakespeare, and lessons which would have been worthy of the elo- quence of a Bossuet.
The two principal heroines of this period are the Duchess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry. We shall try to group around these two princesses the persons who play a part — either with the Bour- bons in exile, or the Bourbons on the throne. One cannot well understand the Restoration unless he identifies himself for a moment with the ideas, ha- treds, and prejudices that existed at the time. One needs to ask himself: "What should I have thought if my relatives had been guillotined; if I had fought in the ranks of the Vende*an army or that of Conde* ; if the education I received at my mother's knee, and
THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULV.MK
the religious and political principles imbibed in infancy, if ray interests, my passions, and those of my family and friends, and my entire surroundings had inspired me with a horror of the French Revo- lution and the Empire which was its continuation?" To the £migr£s the conqueror at Austerlitz was but a crowned Jacobin — a Robespierre on horseback. It was he who had prevented repentant France from cast- ing herself into the arms of her rightful sovereign. It was he, the friend of Barras, who had prevented the Convention from going down under the weight of public contempt and indignation. It was he who, on the 13th Vende"miaire, had trained his guns upon the honest people of Paris from the steps of Saint Roch; who had fought beside former Septembrists and the gendarmes of Fouquier-Tinville. It was he who had sent Auger eau, the author of the hateful coup d'etat of the 18th Fructidor to the Directory. To him were due those transportations to Cayenne in iron cages, those horrible proscriptions, described as dull guillotines, which were worse than death itself. It was he who had assassinated the Duke d'Enghien. It was he who, through his insensate ambition, had roused all Europe and left France far smaller than when he became its master. It was he who had brought upon the country the indignity of invasion, which it had not known for ages.
On the contrary, in the belief of legitimists, roy- alty was a paternal, tutelary, civilizing, and repar- ative government. In 1792, they said perfect free-
INTRODUCTION
dom had been granted by Louis XVI., and all that had been done since the time of the martyr-king had been not merely useless, but disastrous. If one wants to know what the legitimists thought in 1814 of the Emperor and the Empire, let him re-read Chateaubriand's famous brochure, Buonaparte and the Bourbons. If persons who had received favors from Napoleon could express themselves about him as Madame de Re*musat has done, what must those have thought and said who, like certain of the emigres, had always been his implacable enemies? What, in respect to him, must have been the ideas of the orphan of the Temple, the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, the Duchess of Angou- leme? We take sides with no regime and are equally averse to the White and the Red Terror; our aim is absolute impartiality; but we try to repro- duce faithfully the circumstances which surrounded the heroines whose lives and character we wish to retrace.
The Duchess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry are two types which offer a singular contrast. The first is always austere ; the other, often frivolous. But each had generous aspirations and patriotic sentiments. The heroism of the one is grave and religious; that of the other has something pagan about it : the first is like a saint ; the second like an amazon ; but as regards presence of mind and perfect coolness they are equally worthy of their ancestor, Henry IV. The two princesses represent legitimist
8 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
France, — one on its grandiose and the other on its gracious side. As a living symbol, the first personi- fies the sorrows and catastrophes of royalty: at the courts of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., the other means youth and the future, radiance and the dawn.
A perfectly consistent character, free from incon- sequence and contradictions, as well as from the levity and fickleness of her sex, possessing a just mind, an intrepid heart, and a soul without fear and without reproach; guiltless of a single bad action or wicked thought; counting among her seventy-two years, three of semi-captivity in the Tuileries, three years and four months of captivity and unutterable anguish in the Temple, and more than forty spent in exile, the daughter of Louis XVI. is assuredly one of the most majestic and pathetic figures in all history. As Chateaubriand has said: "A weak and suffering woman has often borne as heavy a load as the strongest one. There is no heart that is not moved when it remembers her. Her sufferings reached such a height that they have become one of the grandeurs of France." The just man of whom Horace speaks has no more energy and moral force than this woman. One might say of her: Impavi- dam ferient ruince.
The orphan of the Temple pardons, but she does not forget. The tortures that crucified her youth have cast a black veil over her whole life. The Tuileries appears to her only as a fatal spot which recalls the mournful days between the 20th of June
INTRODUCTION
and the 10th of August. During the entire Restora- tion she refuses to pass Place Louis XV., the square of crime, on which were erected the scaffolds of her father, her mother, and her aunt, the incomparable Madame Elisabeth. In her manners and turn of mind the Duchess of Angouleme resembles Louis XVI. rather than Marie Antoinette. Her character, like that of her father, is a mixture of goodness and rusticity. She has not her mother's elegant instincts and feminine charm. The society of the Little Trianon would have distressed her beyond measure. She thinks that the crown should not be an ornament, but a burden. She cares nothing for theatres, orna- ments, and fetes. Her voice is somewhat harsh. Piety is the foundation of her soul. Nothing equals her faith unless it be her courage. Her feelings are deep, but not sentimental. The romantic side of suffering offends her. Annoyed by hearing herself called the modern Antigone, she mistrusts what might be called literary tears and emotions made to order. Taught in the school of misfortune and versed in all the palinodes of courtiers by hard expe- rience, she dislikes to make a spectacle of her griefs. She hides them in the depths of her heart as in an impenetrable sanctuary, and confides her regrets and troubles to God alone. She thinks that a grief like hers needs neither comment nor publication. Noth- ing is affected in the Duchess of Angouleme, nothing theatrical, nothing factitious. All is sincere, all is austere, and all is true. This is what gives that
10 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL&ME
grandiose figure, more worthy than attractive, more rude than gracious, a something truly noble and imposing.
The Duchess of Berry presents herself under a different aspect. By her romantic disposition and taste for the arts, she recalls the heroines of the court of the later Valois. She is a woman of the Renaissance rather than of the nineteenth century. A worthy descendant of the Be"arnais, she has his good-humor and his valor, his gaiety and grace. Amiable, good, and charitable, unaffected and not conceited, unprejudiced and not spiteful, fond of room and liberty and sunlight, half Neapolitan, half French, she patronizes men of letters, painters, and musicians. She prevents the Tuileries from resem- bling a barracks or a prison. The court is brightened by her smile. Louvel's poniard interrupts her career of joy and pleasure. On the dismal night of February 13, 1820, she is sublime in her sorrow and despair. This widow of twenty-one years excites universal sympathy. She is flattered and exalted to the skies when, in the course of the same year, she gives birth to the son whom courtiers call the child of Europe, the child of miracle.
The catastrophe of 1830 comes. The Duchess of Berry is not disheartened. In spite of Charles X. and the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, she plunges without hesitation into the most daring adventures. A reader of Walter Scott, one would say she wanted to add a chapter to the Jacobite
INTRODUCTION 11
exploits of Diana Vernon, Alice Lee, and Flora Maclvor. She is reproached with having put faith too readily in the promises of her partisans; but how many oaths had been taken to her and her son ! Is an imaginative, an emotional woman inexcusable for thinking she is still in the age of knights and troubadours ? The legend of the Duchess of Angou- leme is the Temple, and that of the Duchess of Berry is La Vendee. The daughter of Louis XVI. all alone, sweeping her own room, mending her only gown, escaping as by miracle from a band of jailers and tormentors; and the mother of the Count of Chambord, disguising herself as a servant, walking barefoot through a crowd of spies and gendarmes, crouching for sixteen consecutive hours without eating and almost without breathing in the nar- row hiding-place of the house of the Demoiselles Duguigny, at Nantes, both affect the heart with tenderness and pity.
To the end of their lives the Duchess of Angou- leme and the Duchess of Berry retained their char- acteristics and ways of doing things. In her latest exiles, the daughter of Louis XVI. was what she had been in the Temple and the Tuileries, an august princess, a noble Christian, a saint. The mother of the Count of Chambord never ceased for an instant, either before or after her misfortunes, to be a lovable and attractive woman. Catastrophes under whose weight so many other princesses might have suc- cumbed, could not break the springs of her spirit.
12
Like Homer's Andromache, she smiled even amid her tears. When, toward the end of her career, so fertile in vicissitudes of every kind, one saw her entertain with such affability and grace, or was present at the banquets, balls, concerts, and private theatricals she gave at her palace in Venice, her wit, her good humor, and gaiety caused surprise. Nobody could imagine himself in the presence of a woman who had gone through so many trials, exiles, and revolutions — of a wife whose husband had been assassinated, and a mother whose son had been deprived of his heritage. No princess in prosperity, no sovereign on the throne, displayed more amenity, more charm, or more enjoyment than this proscribed woman.
Before beginning the study we are now approach- ing, let us cast a rapid and comprehensive glance at the career of the two women who are its principal heroines.
II
The daughter of Louis XVI. was born at Ver- sailles, December 19, 1778. Her birth nearly cost her mother's life. "Poor little girl," said Marie Antoinette, " you were not wished for, but you shall not be less dear. A son would have belonged more particularly to the State. You will be mine; you shall have all my care, you shall share my happiness and lighten my griefs." On the day when the young Princess made her first communion, her father
INTRODUCTION 13
addressed her these words which she was never to forget: "Remember, my daughter, that religion is the source of happiness, and our support in the troubles of life. Do not believe that you will be sheltered from them. You are very young, but you have already seen your father more than once afflicted." Trials had come very early to the future orphan of the Temple. In June, 1789, she lost her brother, the first Dauphin, who died of consumption, like the monarchy. During the terrible night of October 5-6, she awoke, all in a tremble, at the moment when her mother was escaping, half-dressed, from her chamber, while the populace were rushing into it and thrusting their bloody pikes into the royal couch. In the morning she was at Marie Antoinette's side when the Queen was forced to make her appearance on the great balcony of the chateau of Versailles, in obedience to the orders of an infuriated multitude. "No children," shouted the mob. No children, . . . as if the madmen dreaded lest the sight of innocence might lessen their fury. A few minutes later, the poor little Princess, in the same carriage with her father and mother, that car- riage preceded by pikemen carrying the heads of the murdered body-guards, made the fatal journey from Versailles to the Tuileries, vestibule of the prison and the scaffold. She accompanied her parents at the time of the flight to Varennes. She saw the heroic Dampierre fall, crying as he died, "Long live the King ! " After June 20, 1792, when the
14 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
populace had invaded the royal residence, a National Guard said to the Queen, pointing to the young Princess as he did so: "How old is Mademoiselle?" Marie Antoinette replied : " She is at an age when such scenes cause only too much horror." On August 10, the poor child left the Tuileries, cling- ing to her mother's hand; and in the narrow box of the Logographe, only eight feet square by ten feet high, for sixteen hours together, in suffocating heat, lacking air and lacking food, she witnessed the death-struggle of royalty. When she was confined in the Temple she was not yet fourteen. She entered it with her family, August 13, 1792. She remained there until December 18, 1795. Deprived, one after another, of her father, her brother, her mother, and her aunt, she was at last left alone in her prison. Subjected in a place of anguish and torture to the rigors of solitary confinement, a pun- ' ishment not then inflicted on the greatest criminals, she escaped the fate of the unfortunate Louis XVII. only by a miracle of moral force and physical energy. However, the hardships of her captivity were les- sened at the close of 1795. Some friendly persons were allowed to enter the dungeon of the Temple. But the young Princess remained inconsolable. " It would have been better for me to share the fate of my relatives, " she said, "than to be condemned to weep for them." She regretted that she too had not ascended the scaffold. It was decided to exchange her for the Conventionists whom Dumouriez had
INTRODUCTION 15
delivered up to Austria. But exile seemed to her no sweeter than captivity. "I would prefer," she said, "the smallest house in France to the honors which everywhere else await a princess so unhappy as I." Some one said to her just as she was cross- ing the frontier: "Madame, France ends here." Her eyes filled with tears. "I leave France with regret," she exclaimed, "for I shall never cease to regard it as my country."
She arrived in Vienna January 9, 1796. She had just completed her seventeenth year. Her beauty, sanctified by misfortune, possessed a touching charm which inspired respectful admiration. She lived for nearly three years and a half in the Austrian capital, where she was not really free. She wanted to rejoin her uncle, Louis XVIII. She wanted to marry her cousin, the Duke of Angouleme, in accordance with the last wishes of her father and mother, while the court of Vienna proposed to give her to the Arch- duke Charles. Their object was to detain her as a sort of hostage, and use her marriage with an Aus- trian prince as a means of promoting the dismember- ment of France. She defeated all these combinations by her presence of mind, firmness, and patriotism. In May, 1799, she was finally permitted to rejoin her uncle, Louis XVIII., at Mittau, in Courland, and in the following month she was married there to the Duke of Angouleme. A caprice of the Czar Paul drove her and her uncle from this asylum where she had found comparative repose, and which
16 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
she left in January, 1801. She crossed Lithuania during a wintry storm, amidst a driving snow. It was then that people began to call her the French Antigone. "Nothing extorts a complaint from her," wrote Count d'Avaray at this period. "She is an angel of consolation to our master and a model of courage to us all. Ah ! how well the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette has profited by the lessons and examples of her childhood!" This was an eventful journey for the exiles : after Mittau, Memel, Koenigsberg, and Warsaw; back to Mittau again, and then, in England, Godsfield Hall and Hartwell. In 1814, a gleam of light appeared in this sombre destiny. On Annunciation Day, March 25, the Duchess of Angouleme, who was then at Hartwell, learned that her husband had made a triumphal entry into Bordeaux. On April 24, she landed with Louis XVIII. at Calais. Her long exile was at an end. She arrived at Paris with the King on May 3, in an open carriage drawn by eight white horses; the streets were strewn with flowers and the houses hung with verdure. Indescribable enthusiasm and universal emotion were shown as she passed by. When she crossed the threshold of the Tuileries, that fatal palace which she had never seen since August 10, 1792, two hundred women dressed in white and adorned with lilies, kneeled before her, saying: "Daughter of Louis XVI., give us your blessing!" Overcome by emotion, she fainted away.
INTRODUCTION 17
This pathetic scene drew tears from every eye. We are men before we are royalists, imperialists, or republicans. Pity belongs to no party. Napoleon used to say: "Imagination rules the world." It is certain that the Duchess of Angouleme's presence beside her uncle exerted a moral force and influence of the greatest value to that Prince. The conqueror of Austerlitz had shown France the majesty of glory. That of misfortune made its appearance with the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Of all the persons belonging to the royal family, this holy woman most impressed the crowd, because, unlike Louis XVIII. and the Count of Artois, who had been abroad during the death-struggle of mon- archy, she had shared all the anguish of the martyred King and Queen, at the Tuileries, Varennes, and in the dungeon of the Temple.
The Duchess of Angouleme was already a legend- ary figure. She was at Bordeaux when the first Restoration came to grief; perhaps, had she been with her uncle, she might have prevented Napoleon's re-entry into Paris. At Bordeaux she made the most energetic efforts to defend the royal cause, and even the imperial troops admired her firmness and her courage. Nevertheless, she was obliged to go into a new exile, which lasted only three months. On July 27, 1815, she returned to the Tuileries, but this time with a feeling of profound sadness. March 20 had robbed her of many illusions. The recanta- tions that went on during and after the Hundred
18 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
Days showed her human nature under a discourag- ing aspect. A Frenchwoman, she was humiliated by the foreign occupation; a royalist, she considered the presence of a regicide in the councils of Louis XVIII. as a disgrace to royalty.
February 13, 1820, she was at the bedside of the Duke of Berry, who had been stabbed. "Courage, brother," she said to him; "but if God calls you to Himself, ask my father to pray for France and for us." On the day after the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux, which had been a great consolation to her afflicted spirit, one of her household said to her: "Your Royal Highness was very happy yesterday." "Yes, very happy yesterday," she answered in a melancholy tone, " but to-day I have been reflecting on the destiny of this child." In 1823, her hus- band's successes in the Spanish campaign gave her pleasure, but in thinking of the deliverance of Ferdinand VII., her mind reverted to the sad fate of Louis XVI. One of her letters ends with the touching exclamation: "It is proved, then, that an unfortunate king may be rescued."
The Duchess of Angouleme had foreseen the revo- lution of 1830. When Charles X. parted with M. de Villdle, she had said : " It is true, then, that you are allowing Ville'le to leave you. My father, to-day you are taking the first step down from the throne." She was travelling when the King signed the orders which were the cause of his fall. She was unable to rejoin him until after the three days of July. In
INTRODUCTION 19
1830 as in 1815, fate had removed the only woman who might have saved the royal cause.
A new and final series of exiles then began for the unfortunate Princess which was not to end with her life, for she is exiled even in her grave. At Lullworth, Holyrood, Prague, Kirchberg, and Goritz, she remained what she had always been, a model of resignation and dignity. Chateaubriand has said: " The most precious moments of our life were those which Madame the Dauphiness permitted us to spend near her. Heaven had deposited a treasure of magnanimity and religion in the depths of that soul which even the prodigalities of misfortune could not exhaust. For once, then, we met a soul sufficiently lofty to permit us to express, without fear of wounding it, what we think concerning the future of society. One could talk about the fate of empires to the Dauphiness, because she could, without regret, see all the kingdoms of earth pass away at the feet of her virtue, as many of them had dwindled into nothingness at the feet of her race."
The Duchess of Angouleme lost her husband June 1, 1844. The Count of Chambord induced her to remain with him. He was more attached to her than to his own mother. As her husband, after the abdication of Charles X. had found himself King for a moment before abdicating himself, she was never addressed except as Queen. Men of all parties held her in profound esteem. Some time after the revo- lution of February 24, 1848, she received a visit
20 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
from M. Charles Didier, a republican. "Madame," said the traveller, "you cannot possibly have failed to see the finger of God in the downfall of Louis Philippe." "It is in everything," she answered. Her interlocutor was struck with the patriotic senti- ments she displayed. "One might have supposed," he has written, "that after suffering so much in France and at the hands of Frenchmen, she must hold the country and its inhabitants in aversion; but nothing of the kind. Strange phenomenon! The more she has suffered in France and by France, the more she is attached to it. She will permit no one to assail it in her presence ; she never speaks of it herself but with love and regret. Her last wish, as she often says, is to be buried in France. Surely a more ardent patriotism was never seen; such a passion for one's native land recalls that of Foscari, who adored Venice in the midst of the tortures that Venice inflicted on him." The death of the daughter of Louis XVI. was as saintly as her life had been. She breathed her last sigh at Frohsdorff, October 18, 1851, aged seventy-two years and ten months. She was buried at Goritz, in the Franciscan chapel, at the side of Charles X. and the Duke of Angouleme. This inscription was placed on her sepulchral stone : " 0 vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite, et videte si est dolor sieut dolor meus ! " — O, all ye that pass by, attend and see whether any sorrow is like unto my sorrow !
We have just summarized the career of the
INTRODUCTION 21
Duchess of AngoulSme. Let us briefly examine that of the Duchess of Berry.
Ill
Marie Caroline Ferdinande Louise came into the world at Naples, September 5, 1798. Her grand- father was the King of the Two Sicilies, and her grandmother, Marie Caroline, sister of Marie Antoi- nette, Queen of France. Her father, the brother of the Princess Marie Ame'lie, afterwards to be Queen of the French, was Francois Xavier Joseph, who was Prince Royal of Naples at the time of her birth, and became King of the Two Sicilies in 1825. Her mother was the Austrian Archduch- ess Marie Clementine, daughter of the Emperor Leopold II., and aunt to the Archduchess Marie Louise, the future wife of the Emperor Napoleon. The infancy of the Duchess of Berry was marked by revolutions and catastrophes. At two years old the little Princess had already crossed the sea twice, flying with her family and returning with them to Naples. In 1806, she departed again for Palermo. Her grandfather was then reigning in Sicily only. After the events of 1815, he regained possession of his double sceptre. The destiny of the Princess shone at this time with the most vivid lustre. In 1816, she espoused the Duke of Berry, second son of Monsieur, who was to reign under the title of Charles X., and nephew of Louis XVI. and
22 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
Louis XVIII. The Bourbons of France and Naples thrilled with joy.
On May 30, the young and charming Princess made her triumphal entry into the harbor of Mar- seilles in a gilded barque, manned by twenty-four rowers dressed in white satin, with blue and gold scarfs, sitting upon a crimson velvet dais. The same woman will be tracked like a wild beast six- teen years later, and will make her escape in the disguise of a servant. The boat advances through a forest of other vessels covered with verdure. All the windows are adorned with women, flags, and garlands. Cannons roar, bells peal, the whole city rings with acclamations. Marseilles rivals Italy in enthusiasm and sunshine. The Duchess, whose progress across France has been a series of ovations, arrives at the picturesque and poetic forest of Fon- tainebleau on June 15. There she finds the royal family at the crossroads of La Croix and Saint He"rem. It is a day of enchantments and illusions. The next day, Corpus Christi, the impatiently expected Princess makes her solemn entry into Paris. She passes through streets strewn with flowers, where she sees temporary altars, triumphal arches, and memorials both religious and monarchi- cal. The prefect of the Seine addresses her in these words, to which the future will give an ironical contradiction: "August Princess, issue of the same blood as our own Princes, tried like them by afflic- tion, triumphant like them over the vicissitudes
INTRODUCTION 23
which have desolated the world, new pledge of their lawful rights and of a return to principle, behold the intoxicating joy of a whole people whose desires and hopes invoke a succession of princes, doubly issuing through you from an adored race. Increase the happiness of an august family whom we long to see flourish, even at the expense of our lives. These walls were the cradle of your noble ancestors. May they offer you nothing but pleasure and happiness, as they will never cease to present the image of love and devotion to their sovereigns ! "
The marriage is celebrated at Notre Dame, June 17. Perhaps the ancient metropolitan church has never been so resplendent. Paris is enchanted with the Princess. The Princess is enchanted with Paris. She and her husband install themselves at the Elyse'e, a more agreeable, commodious, and gayer abode than the Tuileries. There she leads a happy life and looks confidently toward the future. She does not meddle with politics, but dances, amuses herself, visits the studios, the theatres, and the court, troubles herself very little about etiquette, and seems more like a private person than a prin- cess. But gloomy presentiments very soon trouble her youthful, almost infantine, gaiety. July 13, 1817, she is delivered of a daughter who dies the next day; September 13, 1818, of a son prematurely born, who lives but two hours. This date of the 13th is to reappear in her destiny.
Paris is at the height of the carnival on February
24 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
13, 1820. It is the last Sunday before Lent. For several days balls and spectacles have succeeded each other with extraordinary animation. The Duke and Duchess of Berry go to the Opera. They receive a most cordial welcome. The representation is very brilliant, but the Duchess, slightly fatigued in con- sequence of a ball she had attended the previous evening, leaves before it is over. The Duke goes with her to her carriage, but just as he is about to re-enter the hall, he is stabbed with a poniard. The Duchess hears her husband's agonizing cry. Her carriage is still before the door. She hastily descends from it, at the moment when the Duke, drawing the weapon from his wound, gives it to M. de Me*snard, exclaiming: "I am a dead man. A priest! . . . Come, my wife, let me die in your arms ! " The Princess is covered with her husband's blood. She is at first taken to the small salon belonging to her box. The crime has been so quickly done that the news of it has not yet reached the body of the theatre. The second act of a ballet is going on. Through a pane of glass which looked into the box from the salon, the dances could still be seen. Joyous music was sounding while the victim lay dying. The King does not arrive until five o'clock in the morn- ing. "Pardon the man who stabbed me!" says the Duke to him. " Holy Virgin, intercede for me. . . . O my country ! . . . Unhappy France ! " An hour later he renders his last sigh. He was born Janu- ary 24, 1778.
INTRODUCTION 25
Pregnant with an infant who will be the Duke of Bordeaux, the widow of twenty-one years in her long mourning veil excites universal sympathy and pity. Persuaded that it is her mission to give France a king, and religious after the Italian fashion, she believes herself especially protected by Saint Louis. She has seen in a dream this ancestor of whom the Bourbon family is so proud, and he has promised her a son.
The Child of Europe, the Child of Miracle, as the newly born was called, came into the world at the palace of the Tuileries, September 29, 1820. Royalist France experienced a delirium of joy. All the poets, with Victor Hugo and Lamartine at their head, composed enthusiastic odes that resemble hymns of thanksgiving. On all sides the Duchess of Berry is treated as a heroine, as a providential being who holds a rank midway between a woman and an angel. The chivalrous and sentimental rhetoric of the period passes all bounds in its hyper- boles of praise. During the last ten years of the Restoration, the popularity of the Princess is im- mense. People say that a more amiable woman was never seen. Her daughter and her son, two inter- esting and beautiful children, form her double coronet. The Orleans family show her a respectful tenderness. She is the movement, life, and anima- tion of the court. Thanks to her, the Marsan Pavil- ion at the Tuileries becomes an enchanting residence. The little court, as her narrow circle of personal
26 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
adherents is called, is the most agreeable and brill- iant of social centres. She sets the fashion. She protects commerce and the arts. She saves the Gymnase theatre by permitting it to be called the theatre of Madame. She rides in the first omnibus that comes along. She makes the coast of Dieppe a fashionable resort. She is a beneficent fairy whose wand of gold and diamonds brings good fortune to all whom it touches. This Princess who seems as if she were made to preside at tournaments and to inspire the chroniclers of the Renaissance, and yet who is modern by the eclecticism of her ideas, her scorn of etiquette, her kindly familiarity, her bour- geois gaiety, and her simple tastes and habits, smiles equally on imperial and royalist celebrities. If any woman could disarm the hatreds and rancors of the most implacable enemies of the monarchy, it would be she.
In 1828, the fascinating Duchess makes a tri- umphal journey in Vende'e. The defenders of throne and altar greet her with acclamations. Old relics of Catholic and royal armies, standards riddled with balls and worn by battles, cemeteries where the white flag drapes the tombs of those who died for the King in the battle of giants, as Napoleon called that formidable struggle whose Be're'sina was the passage of the Loire, bells ringing in every parish, frenzied cries of joy, incessantly renewed ovations, all excite the imagination of the Princess, who passes through the region on horseback. The peas-
INTRODUCTION 27
ants, seeing how fearlessly she manages her horse in the midst of the discharges of musketry which salute her as she passes, cry : " Ah ! the brave little woman ! that one isn't afraid ! " She considers every peasant a knight-errant, who, if need were, would shed the last drop of his blood for her, and she promises the Vende'ans that if fortune ever should forsake her, she will come back to seek an asylum and confide to them the royal cause. Her journey in 1828 will be the germ of her expedition in 1832.
The Duchess of Berry is valor itself. When she sees Charles X., whom old age had rendered dull and heavy, yield so readily to the revolution, she becomes irritated and indignant. On July 29, 1830, she is in the upper story of the palace of Saint Cloud, looking through a spyglass toward Paris, whose monuments define themselves in the distance against a cloudless sky. All at once, she no longer sees the white flag on the roof of the Tuileries. Another standard has replaced it. "Ah! my God!" she cries, " I perceive the tricolored flag ! " At Saint Cloud, as at Rambouillet, she entreats Charles X. to let her start for Paris with her son. The old King obstinately refuses. "Very well," says she, "I will not take Henri; I will go alone." All her entreaties are in vain. The}r keep her back by force. The cause of the elder branch of the Bourbons is forever lost!
On arriving in Scotland, the Duchess is unable to endure exile beneath that misty and gloomy sky.
28 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
The castle of Holyrood, the melancholy abode of the Stuarts, inspires her with profound repugnance. Moreover, she is unwilling that the Bourbons of the elder branch should end like the descendants of Charles I. and James II. Prudent counsels seem to her marks of weakness and cowardice. She quits the society gathered around Charles X., because it is out of harmony with her ardent soul, and goes to prepare, under the brilliant skies of Italy, a kind of romantic imitation of the return from Elba. The most sensible of the legitimists vainly seek to dissuade her from her enterprise. She listens only to lovers of adventure, to hot heads, to officers who have resigned from the royal guard and who fret at their enforced inaction, to penniless nobles. They tell her that the monarchy of July is dying in its cradle, and that the mother of Henri V. would have but to touch the soil of France to be able to say, like Caesar: Veni, vidi, vici. She believes it. The mirage of the emigration has deceived her. She naively imagines that she is going to be the greatest heroine of modern times; that she will surpass the glories of Jeanne d' Arc and Jeanne Hachette; that she will be able to reconquer the most beautiful crown in the universe for her son, and thus justify all the adulations of which she had been the object in her prosperous days. Joyous and full of confidence, she sets out on her adventurous expedition as if it were a hunting-party, and impatiently awaits the danger which has charms for a nature so nervous and desirous of emotions.
INTRODUCTION 29
April 26, 1832, at three o'clock in the morning, she embarks near Massa on the Carlo Alberto, a ship which she has chartered. In the night of April 28-29, she arrives in the straits of Planier, in Pro- vence. But what a difference since the day, sixteen years before, when she entered the harbor of Mar- seilles in such majestic pomp! But this contrast only stimulates her. She finds nothing discourag- ing. The rising prepared by the Marseilles voyagers is a failure. She is entreated to leave France; she refuses, and by night and on foot, walking silently under a moonless and starless sky, she starts for Vendee, where she intends to fight. All her pro- jects come to nought. Instead of a general armed rising, there are only partial movements which the troops of King Louis Philippe easily repress. A fugitive, hunted by the police, obliged to disguise herself as a peasant and soil her hands with dust lest their whiteness should betray her, she enters Nantes on a market day, June 9, 1832, with only one companion, Mademoiselle Eulalie de Kersabiec, disguised like herself, and takes refuge in the house of the Demoiselles Duguigny, rue Haute-du-Chateau. She will live there five months, in a garret on the third story, using a folding-chair by way of a bed, never stirring out of doors, and fearing to be dis- covered at every minute.
At six in the evening of November 7, 1832, as the Princess is looking at an unclouded sky through the dormer window of her garret, she hears the noise of
80 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
many footsteps. They are those of troops coming to surround the house. It happens to have, and it was on that account the Duchess had chosen it as a refuge, a secret hiding-place, an old relic of the Terror of 1793, which during the judicial drownings at Nantes had more than once offered an asylum to fugitive or proscribed persons. It is contrived in one of the garrets of the third story. The wall of a chimney built in one of the corners of the garret closes it in front, and at the back is the exterior wall of the house, on which rest the rafters that form the upper part of the hiding-place. The back of the chim- ney, which may be opened at will, gives access to it. This retreat is about eighteen inches wide at one of its extremities, and from eight to ten at the other, and from three to three and a half feet long. The height goes on decreasing toward its narrowest extremity, so that a man could hardly stand erect at that part even by putting his head between the rafters. It is here that the Duchess crouches down with three other persons, — Count de Mesnard, M. Guibourg, and Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec. She has but just entered it when the garret is invaded by soldiers and police commissioners. The whole house is searched. Sappers and masons sound the walls and floors with great blows of hatchets and hammers. They strike so hard that pieces of plaster loosen and fall on the Duchess in the hiding-place, where she listens to the oaths of the men, who are tired and furious over their futile search. " We are going to
INTRODUCTION 31
be torn to pieces," she says in a whisper to her com- panions in this close captivity; "all is over. Ah! my poor children ! And yet it is on my account that you are in this frightful position." The search re- laxes. It is believed that the Duchess has escaped. Even she hopes she will be saved. But an unex- pected incident ruins all. The weather is cold. The gendarmes who remain in the garret kindle a large fire in the chimney which forms part of the hiding-place. Presently the wall becomes too hot to be touched by the hand. The back is reddened by the flames. The prisoners are threatened with suffocation or burning alive.
Already the gown of the Duchess has taken fire twice. She has extinguished it with her hands, without complaining of the burns, whose scars she bears for a long time. It catches fire again. She puts it out. But the back of the chimney creaks. "Who is there?" says a gendarme. Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec responds: "We surrender; we are going to open the back of the chimney; put out the fire." It is half -past nine in the morning. The prisoners have been without food and almost with- out air, and suffering unspeakable agonies for sixteen hours. A few seconds longer, and they would have died. The gendarmes kick the faggots aside, and the Duchess comes out first, touching perforce the still scorching hearth.
Behold this elegant, admired, and adulated Prin- cess, this enchantress who has passed under so many
32 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
triumphal arches and been so often buried under an avalanche of flowers, this graceful magician, this good fairy who has presided at such magnificent and brilliant f£tes at the Elyse'e and the Tuileries, at Compiegne and Fontainebleau ; behold the heir- ess of Saint Louis, Henri IV., and Louis XIV., the Regent of France, stepping from her hiding- place on still burning cinders, her dress in rags, her hands and feet all blistered; behold her a pris- oner, delivered up, sold for a little gold by the most infamous of traitors, by a man whom she had loaded with benefits, by Deutz, that new Judas, to whom Victor Hugo has addressed this avenging apos- trophe : —
" O wretch ! did nothing in thy soul then say That to be banned is reverend for aye ; That breasts at which we once have nourished been We may not smite : the valet of a queen May sell her not to other wretch at will : That, queen no more, she is a woman still ! "
The thing is done ; the bargain concluded by M. Thiers with this traitor is consummated. The Duch- ess loses neither her self-possession nor her dignity in this fatal moment. Sixteen hours of torture have not been able to exhaust her courage. She sends for General Damoncourt. He enters: "General," she says calmly, " I have done what a mother could to reconquer the inheritance of her son." He offers his arm to conduct her to the chateau of Nantes, where she is to be incarcerated. "Ah! general,"
INTRODUCTION
she exclaims, giving a final glance at the back of the fatal chimney before quitting the house, " if you had not made war on me in the Saint Lawrence style, which was rather ungenerous in a soldier, by the way, you wouldn't have me under your arm at this moment."
From the chateau of Nantes the prisoner is taken to the citadel of Blaye. The story of her touching captivity there will be narrated by one of her physi- cians, the witty Doctor Me"nie*re. Nothing gives a better idea of the Duchess than the journal kept by this physician, a sagacious observer, but benevolent and at times even affected by his illustrious and always amiable patient. Among her jailers, if such a name may ever be applied to heroes, there were a general and a young officer, both of whom afterwards became marshals of France. One of them was to be the victor of Isly, and the other of the Alma. Each of them has. given an account in his letters of the captivity of the Duchess and her psychological con- dition, with its alternations of anger and gaiety, of groans and smiles. Her situation becomes more complicated through an incident which no one had foreseen and in which her enemies find their account. The government learns that she is pregnant, and decrees that the child shall be born in the citadel of Blaye. At Paris, the ministers of Louis Philippe have decided that the accouchement shall be verified by their functionaries. They fancy it will be a triumph for the monarchy of July.
34 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
The Duchess of Berry is in despair. But how is she to deny the evidence ? She is obliged to submit. Then she owns that she has contracted a secret mar- riage with a Neapolitan diplomat, Count Lucchesi Palli, and on May 10, 1833, she is delivered of a daughter in the citadel of Blaye. She leaves her prison, at last, on June 8, and embarks for Sicily. After so many sufferings she is free. But Charles X. has a grudge against her. It is not easy to bring about a reconciliation between her and the old mon- arch. Chateaubriand undertakes this delicate nego- tiation: "Yes," he writes, "I will depart on the last and most glorious of my embassies ; I will go, on the part of the prisoner of Blaye, to find the prisoner of the Temple; I will go to negotiate a new family compact, to bear the embraces of a captive mother to her exiled children, and to present the letters by which courage and misfortune have accredited me to innocence and virtue."
Poor mother ! Even her own family were not very grateful for all she had endured on behalf of her son's cause. Princesses are certainly unfortunate in the France of the nineteenth century. If they do not resist revolutions, they are accused of weakness ; if they struggle, their resistance is accounted folly. Charles X., .who had been so timid in 1830, regarded the energy of a woman as an indirect criticism of his own conduct, and the austere Duchess of Angoul^me, who understood the Vende'an expedition, and admired the courage of the heroine, could not comprehend
INTRODUCTION 35
the feminine weakness of which so cruel an advan- tage had been taken by the ministers of Louis Philippe. However, the little court of the exiled monarch adopted a milder view. The reconciliation took place, but it was more official than actual. The political career of the Duchess of Berry was ended. She no longer saw her son except at long intervals, a few days in a year, while the Prince never quitted, we might say, the Duchess of Angou- leme, who was like a second mother to him, more influential and more regarded than the real one.
The Duchess of Berry passed in comparative tran- quillity the last years of a life whose beginnings and whose prime had been so stormy. She lived very happily with Count Lucchesi Palli, by whom she had several children, and who regarded her with all the deferential esteem of a prince-consort. But in Styria, where she owned the chateau of Brunse'e, near Gratz; and in Venice, where in 1843 she bought the fine Vendramini palace, on the Grand Canal, she received with extreme affability, and the elegance of her entertainments recalled the epoch when she inhabited the Elyse*e and the Pavilion of Marsan. In 1847, she gave private theatricals at Venice, and among the actors and spectators were twenty-seven persons belonging to imperial or royal families. Generous beyond her means, she expended a great deal, but her son paid the debts she had con- tracted through excessive charity. In her place, a woman of severe character would have lived in per-
36 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
petual mourning; a vindictive woman would have conceived a horror of human nature. The Duchess of Berry, on the contrary, after so many catastrophes, sorrows, and deceptions, lost not one of those gra- cious and attractive qualities which had caused her success in France. She continued to love literature and the arts, society and the world. Up to the very end she preserved that benevolence, indulgence, and amenity which characterize veritable great ladies. A princess from head to foot, she always played her part with exquisite distinction, as well in exile as on the steps of the throne. She had found out that grievances are not well-bred. A complaint against destiny seemed unworthy of a race so noble as hers. In the latter years of her life, nevertheless, she was subjected to trials no less painful than those of her youth. March 26, 1854, the Duke of Parma, the husband of the Princess Louise, her daughter by the Duke of Berry, was mortally wounded by the stiletto of an assassin. Louvel's crime was thus repeated after an interval of thirty-four years. The husband and the son-in-law of the Duchess of Berry- passed through the same majestic and pious death- agony. After having blessed his four children, — Prince Robert, Princess Marguerite, Princess Alixe, and Count de Bardi, — the Duke of Parma expressed the same sentiments as Louvel's victim. A few days after the tragic death of his brother-in-law, the Count of Chambord wrote : " He who has just been so cruelly stricken had no words but those of for-
INTRODUCTION 37
giveness for his murderer, and never ceased until his last sigh to show admirable faith, piety, courage, and Christian resignation. This is our only consola- tion under an affliction as frightful as it was unfore- seen." In 1864, two new misfortunes came to rend the heart of the Duchess of Berry. February 1, she lost her good and charming daughter, the Prin- cess Louise of France, Duchess of Parma, who died at the age of forty-four; and exactly two months later, on April 1, her husband, Count Hector Luc- chesi Palli, Duke Delia Grazia. This double afflic- tion reduced her to despair.
"I have been so tried," she wrote, "that my poor head feels the effects of it. It made me nearly mad to lose my good and saintly daughter ; but the kind attentions of the Duke had calmed me somewhat when God recalled him to himself. He died in my arms like a saint, surrounded by his children, smiling at me, and pointing to heaven. Yes, dear friend, you are right in saying that our only consolation is to raise our eyes to heaven, where those we love await us. But for us, on earth, what sorrows ! "
As the woman who had known so many griefs and endured so many trials advanced in life, her relig- ious sentiments became more strongly marked. Mis- fortune, that great master, had given her so many lessons! She could make so many reflections on human vicissitudes, this great-niece of Queen Marie Antoinette, this widow of an assassinated prince, this mother of a disinherited prince, this mother-in-
38 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
law of a poniarded son-in-law, this daughter-in-law of Charles X., this cousin-german of the Empress Marie Louise, this niece of Queen Marie Amelie! She died suddenly at Brunse'e, April 16, 1870, of apoplexy, the same death as that of her grandmother, Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples. She was seventy- one years old. If she had been living in 1873, no doubt she would have given her son different coun- sels from those he followed. But Providence had decided that the mission of the elder branch of Bourbons was finished in France.
On the whole, what interesting types the Duch- ess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry are! What personifications of one of the most instructive and affecting epochs of history! What souvenirs, dramas, and legends are suggested by the names of these two women! The Duchess of Angouleme is the Temple, the Terror, the Exile, the Restoration, at first with its infatuations, and afterwards with its bitterness, its deceptions, and its cataclysms. The Duchess of Berry is hope speedily disappointed, illusion quickly dispelled; the enchantment of a society which was amiable and gracious in spite of its weaknesses, errors, and infatuations; the spell of an epoch when great faults were committed, but which was able to unite the elegance of the old regime to the guarantees of modern liberty, to make both the court and the tribune brilliant, to produce a marvellous .harvest of great achieve- ments, and recommend itself to posterity by an
INTRODUCTION 39
incomparable group of men of talent and genius. The Duchess of Angoulchne is the purity of tra- dition, the majesty of the past, the legend of sanc- tity and sorrow. The Duchess of Berry, a type less venerable but more feminine, is the image of a convulsed society, the transition between the past and the future, the woman of contrasts, who some- times appears all glittering in brocade and the crown diamonds beneath the vaulted roof of Notre Dame, and sometimes in a peasant's gown on the road to Nantes, or vainly seeking refuge in the narrow hiding-place of the mysterious house of the Demoi- selles Duguigny. By turns she is the triumphant betrothed, the flattered wife, the idolized mother, the fugitive, the vanquished, the proscribed, who, after anguish of all descriptions, falls into the snares of treason and infamy. Around these two women, the principal actors in this great historic drama, what unlike figures group themselves : the executioners of the Terror, the £migr£s, the soldiers of the royal guard, the Vende'ans, the innumerable courtiers of the Tuileries and the rare courtiers of the Exile, who assist respectfully at the last days and the obsequies of the old French monarchy !
There is another woman whom we shall have to consider also, for she likewise is a woman of the Tuileries, where she resided in her childhood, from 1820 to 1830. This is the Princess Louise of France, who was born September 2, 1819, a year before her brother, the Duke of Bordeaux. Old men
40 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
who lived in Paris at the time of the Restoration recall the sympathy aroused by the pretty little Princess when she was seen at the Tuileries, run- ning along the terrace beside the water, holding her brother by the hand, or walking beneath the trees in the beautiful park of Saint Cloud. Her mother idolized her. From the citadel of Blaye the prisoner wrote to the author of the GSniS du Christianisme : "I beg you to convey to my dear children the expression of my affection for them. Tell Henri especially that I count more than ever on his efforts to become daily more worthy of the admiration and love of the French people. Tell Louise how happy I would be to embrace her, and that her letters are my only consolation." After the revolution of 1830, the young Princess never quitted her aunt, the Duchess of Angouleme, until her marriage. Cha- teaubriand, who in 1833 made a journey to Prague, the asylum of the exiled Bourbons, wrote at that time : " I saw the brother and sister, like two pretty gazelles, straying amidst the ruins. Mademoiselle resembles her father somewhat ; her hair is fair, and her blue eyes have a fine expression. There is in her entire person a blending of the child, the young girl, and the princess. She looks at you, she lowers her eyes, she smiles with native coquetry; one is at a loss whether to tell her a fairy tale or to address her respectfully as one would a queen."
On, November 10, 1845, a year before the marriage of her brother, the Count of Chambord, the Princess
INTRODUCTION 41
Louise espoused the hereditary Prince of Lucca, a scion like herself of the house of Bourbon, whose father reigned in the duchy of Lucca while waiting for the reversion of that of Parma, to which the Empress Marie Louise had only a life title. The widow of Napoleon died in 1847, and the Duke Charles Louis, ceding the duchy of Lucca to Tus- cany, became Duke of Parma. He was driven out of his new dominions by an insurrection in 1849, and abdicated in favor of his son, Charles III., hus- band of the Princess Louise of France. The analo- gies between the destinies of this Princess and her mother are striking. Like the Duchess of Berry, she mourned her husband, stabbed by an assassin; like the Duchess of Berry, she energetically defended the rights of her son. But while the Duchess of Berry had been regent only in name, the Duchess of Parma was so in fact from 1854 to 1860, in the name of her son, the young Duke of Parma. She gov- erned the country with rare intelligence. But fatality pursued her race. The movement for unity swept away the little throne of Parma. Duke Robert had the same fate as his uncle the Count of Chambord, and in 1860, in spite of his mother's protests, his states were annexed to the new king- dom of Italy.
The history we are beginning is a funeral oration, but one which has its gay and luminous passages ; a tragi-comedy wherein, as in human life, smiles blend with tears, hope with discouragement, joy with sor-
42 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
row. We shall not draw our materials simply from books, memoirs, manuscripts, newspapers, official acts, and private letters. We shall seek informa- tion, hitherto unpublished, from many persons hon- ored by intimacy Avith the princesses of whom we desire to paint true portraits, and not fancy sketches. The great advantage of dealing with subjects near our own time is that one may consult ocular wit- nesses of most of the events which must be described, and that the check exercised by these persons neces- sitates an absolute respect for truth. Formerly, writers hesitated to treat contemporary history. To-day, they prefer it to that of distant ages. Every time a man who has had a part to play dies, we say : " What a misfortune not to have profited enough yet by his souvenirs! " Is not history like a vast legal inquiry, which demands that the greatest possible number of witnesses shall be summoned ?
The eighteenth century is known at present, not merely in its ensemble, but in its minute details. It is the nineteenth that demands investigation. If one brings to such studies that partisan spirit which has the sorry privilege of spoiling all it touches, he will accomplish nothing serious ; but if he remains faithful to the motto: "Truth, nothing but the truth, all the truth"; if he observes conscientiously; if while compassionating sufferings and recounting extenuating circumstances together with the faults he chronicles, he bases his conclusions on the laws of morality, justice, and honor, — he may fearlessly
INTRODUCTION 43
treat subjects which at first glance appear difficult. Doubtless, what relates to the private history of celebrated princesses needs particularly delicate treatment. Their biographers ought never to forget what is due to women ; above all, to unhappy women. But to continue after their misfortunes the flattery of which they were the victims in their days of prosperity would not be to pay a real homage to their memory. Respect does not exclude freedom, and the historian ought never to transform himself into a courtier.
FIRST PART THE CAPTIVITY
THE TEMPLE TOWER
THE most ardent revolutionists and those most wrought upon by hatred and regicidal passions were not able to pass the tower of the Temple when the Terror was at its height, without experiencing certain qualms. The vast skeleton of stone dating from the twelfth century and recalling the baleful history of the Order of Templars, wore an aspect more dismal and fantastic than ever. This dungeon, which succeeded Versailles and the Tuileries, for the descendants of Louis XIV. seemed a fatal spot — where Louis XVI. had not been since the morning of January 21, 1793, but where his Queen, Marie Antoinette, her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth, her daughter, Madame Royale (the future Duchess of Angouleme), and his son, whom the royalists of France and all Europe styled Louis XVII., but whom his jailers called Capet, still remained. It was known in a vague sort of way that the royal
45
46 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
family endured indescribable sufferings in this accursed abode, and tears came into the eyes of royalists as they gazed at its gigantic walls: more than one republican sought in vain to escape a like emotion. Persons who had seen the royal family resplendent in gala carriages on days when they made triumphal visits to the good city of Paris, could not avoid reflections on the vicissitudes in human affairs, and on catastrophes which no har- binger of misfortune would have ventured to fore- bode. They recalled May 24, 1785, the day when the Queen, who had been delivered on the previous March 27, of the child destined to be called Louis XVII., had come to the Temple in a very different fashion. On that day the brilliant goddess — for, according to Pdre Duchesne himself, people then regarded her as a divinity — made a ceremonious entry into Paris for the purpose of being churched. Her carriage, drawn by eight white horses, was escorted by fifty body-guards. The cannons of the Invalides thundered. She went to Notre Dame, then to Sainte Genevie've, and afterwards to the Tuileries, where she dined. In the evening she went to the Temple to supper. The entertainment ended by fireworks which the Count of Aranda set off, in the Queen's presence, on the top of his house situated on the Place Louis XV. What reflections are not awakened by those words : the Temple and the Place Louis XV. !
Marie Antoinette had always felt an instinctive
THE TEMPLE TOWER 47
repugnance for the sombre dungeon around which so many gloomy memories lingered. She beheld it with vague uneasiness, as if affected by a presentiment. Nothing could be more dismal than this edifice, this scene prepared beforehand for the most sinister of historical dramas. It formed a quadrangular dungeon one hundred and fifty feet in height, not counting the roof, and its walls were nine feet thick. It was flanked at each of its corners by a round tower, and accompanied on its north side by a small but solid mass of masonry, surmounted by two much lower towers. This pile, which was called the little tower, leaned against the large one, but had no interior communication with it. A profound melancholy overspread the tomb-like monument. It bore neither inscription nor ornament, but, freezing and accursed in appearance, it seemed like a spot haunted by spectres.
The interior was, if possible, more gloomy still. The large tower was built in four stories, vaulted, and supported in the centre by a column rising from the bottom to the top. The ground-floor, where the municipal officers had their quarters, formed but one large room. The same thing was true of the first story, which was occupied by the body-guards. The second story, where the King had dwelt, and which was now the prison of his son, had been divided into four rooms by partitions. The third, an exact repro- duction of the second, was occupied by Marie Antoinette, her daughter, Madame Royale, and her
48 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth. The ante-cham- ber, just above that of the apartment of Louis XVI., was preceded like it by two doors, one of oak and the other of iron. Its paper-hangings represented cut stones, laid one upon another. From these one passed into the Queen's chamber, hung with paper covered with pale zones of green and blue, and dimly lighted by a grated window, concealed by an awn- ing. The floor was tiled in small squares. A clock on the chimney-piece represented Fortune and her wheel. Mere chance had provided this really sym- bolic timepiece. Marie Antoinette and the young Marie The'rdse (Madame Royale) occupied this cham- ber in common, and adjoining it was the turret which served as their dressing-room. The Queen's bed stood just over the place where that of Louis XVI. had been on the floor below, and her dress- ing-room above the turret used as an oratory by Louis XVI. The chamber was furnished with Marie Antoinette's bed, her daughter's reversible couch, a mahogany commode, a small sofa, a mir- ror forty-five inches by thirty-six, and a wooden screen with four leaves. At the left was Madame Elisabeth's chamber, containing an iron bedstead, a commode, a walnut table, a fireplace, a mirror forty- five inches by thirty-two, two chairs, two armchairs covered with chintz, and two candlesticks. The fourth story, which comprised but one large room, was not occupied, but served as a storage place for disused furniture and boards. Between the battle-
THE TEMPLE TOWER 49
ments and the roof there was a gallery where the prisoners sometimes walked. The spaces between the battlements had been provided with solid win- dow-blinds, so that it was impossible to see or to be seen thence.
Marie Antoinette left the Temple for the Concier- gerie at two in the morning. At that moment our present recital begins. The narrator shall be the heroine of this study, Marie The*rese of France, Madame Royale, the future Duchess of Angouleme. This young girl of fourteen kept a journal in her captivity which she called "A Narrative of what occurred at the Temple from August 13, 1792, until the death of the Dauphin, Louis XVII." Sainte-Beuve says of it: "She wrote it in a terse, correct, and simple style, without a mannerism or a superfluous word, as beseemed a profound heart and an upright mind, speaking in all sincerity of real griefs, of those truly ineffable griefs which surpass words. In it she unaffectedly forgets her- self as far as possible. All party spirit is disarmed and expires in reading this narrative, and gives place to profound pity and admiration. Gentleness, piety, and modesty animate the pages of this injured maiden."
Marie The'rese thus describes the terrible night of August 2, 1793: "August 2, at two o'clock in the morning, they came to wake us up in order to read my mother the decree of the Convention, which ordered that, upon the requisition of the Procureur
50 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
of the Commune, she should be conducted to the Conciergerie for her trial. She listened to the read- ing of this decree without being affected or saying a single word. My aunt and I at once asked to follow my mother, but this favor was not granted. While she was packing up her clothes the municipal officers did not quit her; she was even obliged to dress in their presence. They demanded lier pockets, which she gave them. They rummaged them and took all they contained, although it was nothing of impor- tance. They made a packet of the contents, which they said they would send to the revolutionary tribunal, where it would be opened before her. They left her nothing but a handkerchief and a smelling bottle, lest she should faint. My mother, after tenderly embracing me and recommending me to be courageous, to take good care of my aunt, and to obey her like a second mother, renewed the instructions my father had given me; then, throw- ing herself into my aunt's arms, she intrusted her children to her care. I made no answer, so greatly frightened was I at the thought that I was seeing her for the last time ; my aunt said a few words in a very low tone. Then my mother went away with- out looking at us, fearing, doubtless, that her cour- age might abandon her. She stopped again at the foot of the tower, because the municipal officers made a proces verbal there, in order to relieve the doorkeeper of responsibility for her person. In going out she struck her head against the wicket,
THE TEMPLE TOWER 51
having forgotten to stoop: some one asked if she had hurt herself. " Oh, no ! " she said ; " nothing can hurt me now."
It was thus that Marie Antoinette left the fatal dungeon where she had passed a twelvemonth of tears and anguish. When she learned that she was to be transferred thither, on August 13, 1792, she had exclaimed: "I always begged the Count of Artois to have that villanous tower of the Temple torn down; it always horrified me."
II
MADAME ELISABETH
MARIE THERESE had now no companion in captivity except Madame Elisabeth. "My aunt and I," she has written in her journal, "were inconsolable, and we spent many days and nights in tears. It was a great consolation not to be separated from my aunt, whom I loved so much ; but alas ! all changed again, and I have lost her also." The daughter and sister of Louis XVI. were to remain together in the great tower of the Temple until May 9, 1794, when Madame Elisabeth departed to the Conciergerie, the vestibule of the guillotine. Dur- ing nine months the young woman was to exhort her youthful niece and inspire her with the principles destined to be the rule of her whole existence. The Princess was the disciple of her aunt, who, if one may say so, was more than a mother to her. Madame Elisabeth! The mere name is like a symbol of piety. There are few figures in history as sympa- thetic and as sweet as hers; very few heads sur- rounded with so pure and luminous a halo. Born May 3, 1764, Madame Elisabeth was twenty-nine years old when Marie Antoinette confided her 52
MADAME ELISABETH 53
daughter to her as she left the Temple for the Con- ciergerie. The Queen knew by experience what devotion, courage, and sanctity filled the heart of her sister-in-law. Losing both father and mother before her third year, Madame Elisabeth had poured out upon her brothers, and especially upon the eldest, who was afterwards to be styled Louis XVI., the affection she would have felt for her parents. In all the splendor of her youth and beauty, she had refused the most brilliant marriages. "I could marry no one," she said at the time, "but the son of a king, and the son of a king must reign over the dominions of his father; I would no longer be a Frenchwoman, and I am not willing to cease being so. I would rather stay here, at the foot of my brother's throne, than ascend any other." She had been unwilling to seek a shelter from danger by following her brothers and her aunts into volun- tary exile. " To go away," said she, " would be both barbarous and stupid." Voluntarily associating herself with all the agonies of the downfall of royalty, she had been admirable for firmness, pres- ence of mind, and coolness during the Varennes journey. On August 20, 1792, when an immense crowd invaded the palace of the Tuileries, she had clung to her brother, declaring that nothing should induce her to leave him. Some of the assassins, mistaking her for Marie Antoinette, tried to thrust her through. "Stop! It is Madame Elisabeth!" cried several voices. "Why did you undeceive
54 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
them?" said the heroic Princess. "This mistake might have saved the Queen." At the Temple she was, as the Duchess of Tourzel has said, " the con- solation of her august family, and notably of the Queen, who, less pious than she when they entered the Temple, had the happiness to imitate that angel of virtue." Mgr. Darboy, whose end was as tragic as that of Madame Elisabeth, has said: "From this common captivity must be dated the intimate friend- ship established between the Queen and Madame Elisabeth; the piety of the one and the virile resig- nation of the other formed a precious bond and mutual encouragement. Madame Elisabeth became a second mother to her nephew and niece, whom she surrounded with the most delicate and devoted cares. The unfortunate Louis XVI. likewise frequently recommended them to consider her as such, and when, on the day before his death, he parted from them for the last time, he placed them, and the Queen also, once more under the protection of his sister, the angel-guardian of the dismal prison."
Every morning in the Temple, Madame Elisabeth recited this prayer which she had composed there : "What will happen to me to-day, O my God? I know not; all that I know is that nothing will happen which Thou hast not foreseen, regulated, willed, and ordained from all eternity. That suf- fices me. I adore Thy eternal and impenetrable designs; I submit to them with all my heart for love of Thee. I will all, I accept all, I make a sac-
MADAME ELISABETH 55
rifice to Thee of all, and I unite this sacrifice to that of my Divine Saviour. I ask Thee in His name and by His infinite merits for patience in my afflictions and the perfect submission that is due to Thee for all Thou wiliest or permittest. " God must have granted this prayer. Madame Elisabeth was to carry resignation, patience, and forgiveness of injuries to a truly sublime perfection. Let us return now to the journal of her niece, who learned in her school to become a saint likewise.
"On the day after my mother's departure," writes Marie The'rese, " my aunt earnestly entreated, in her own name as well as mine, to be allowed to rejoin her; but she could not obtain this, nor even learn any news of her. As my mother, who had never drunk anything but water, could not endure that of the Seine, because it made her ill, we begged the municipal officers to permit that of Ville-d'Avray, which was brought daily to the Temple, to be sent her. They consented, and took measures accord- ingly; but another of their colleagues arrived who opposed it. A few days afterward, in order to hear from us, she sent to ask for several things that were of use to her, and among others some knit- ting, because she had undertaken to make a pair of stockings for my brother ; we sent her all the silk and wool we could find, for we knew how well she loved to be employed; she had always been accus- tomed to work incessantly except at the hours when she had to appear in public. Thus she had made an
56 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
enormous quantity of furniture covers, and even a carpet, besides an infinity of coarse woollen knitted things of all descriptions. We collected then, all we could; but we learned afterwards that nothing was sent, because they said they were afraid she would do herself harm with the needles."
Marie The're'se was not less anxious about her brother's fate than about that of her mother. The child lived just underneath her, on the second floor of the great Temple tower, and yet all tidings of him were denied her. But the persecutor of the innocent victim, Simon the cobbler, raised his voice so high that his oaths and blasphemies could be heard on the third story. What crowned the afflic- tion of the pious Princess was that they sought to corrupt the child as well as to persecute him. " We heard him singing the Carmagnole, the Marseillaise, and a thousand other horrible things with Simon every day," writes Marie Th&r&se. "Simon put a red cap on his head and a revolutionary jacket on his body ; he made him sing at the windows so as to be heard by the guards, and taught him to utter frightful curses against God, his family, and the aristocrats. Happily, my mother did not hear all these horrors. What pain they would have caused her! Before her departure they had sent for my brother's clothes; she had said she hoped that he would not leave off wearing mourning; but the first thing Simon did was to take off his black suit. The change in his food, and ill treatment,
MADAME ELISABETH 57
made my brother ill toward the end of August. Simon fed him horribly, and forced him to drink a great deal of wine, which he detested. All this soon brought on a fever; he took medicine which disagreed with him, and his health was completely ruined."
The young Princess was also suffering about this time. "In the beginning of September," she says, " I had an indisposition which had no other cause than my anxiety about my mother's fate. I never heard a drum without fearing another second of September. We went up on the roof of the tower every day. The municipal officials visited us three times daily without fail ; but their severity did not prevent our getting news from outside, and especially of my mother, because we have always found some kindly souls in whom we inspired interest. We learned that my mother was accused of receiving commu- nications from without. We threw away at once our writings, our pencils, and all that we might still be writing, fearing that we might be forced to un- dress before Simon's wife, and that the things we had might compromise my mother ; for we had always kept ink, paper, pens, and pencils in spite of the most rigorous searches made in our rooms and fur- niture. The municipals came to ask for underwear for my mother, but were not willing to give us any news of her. They took away from us the scraps of tapestry she had made, and those on which we were working, under the pretence that mysterious char-
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acters and a secret way of writing might be concealed in them."
Meanwhile, the captivity of the two Princesses constantly became more rigorous. "Every day," says Marie The're'se, "we were visited and searched by the municipals ; on September 4, they arrived at four o'clock in the morning to make a thorough search and take away the silverware and china. They carried off all that we had remaining, and not finding it agree with their list, they had the base- ness to accuse us of having stolen some, when it was their own colleagues who had concealed it. They found a roll of louis behind the drawers in my aunt's commode, and they took possession of it on the spot with extraordinary eagerness."
The two captives were soon deprived of almost everything. No manner of consideration or respect was any longer shown them. Their jailers were bent on treating them like criminals. September 21, 1793, at one o'clock in the morning, Hubert, the substitute for the Communal attorney, presented himself with several municipals at the Temple to put into execution a decree ordaining that the two Princesses should be more tormented than they had been. They were to have but one chamber thence- forward, and Tison, who was still doing their heavy work, was to be imprisoned in one of the turrets. The captives were to be reduced to what was strictly necessary, and no one except the person who brought them wood and water was to enter their chamber.
MADAME ELISABETH 59
"We made our own beds," writes Marie The'r&se in her journal, " and were obliged to sweep the cham- ber, which took a long time, so little were we used to it at first. We had no longer any one to wait upon us. Hubert said to my aunt that equality was the first law of the French Republic, and that as no other persons detained in prisons had servants, he was going to take away Tison. In order to treat us still more severely, we were deprived of whatever was convenient, for example, of the armchair used by my aunt; we could not have even what was necessary. When our meals arrived, the door was closed abruptly so that we might not see those who brought them. We could not obtain any news, unless by listening to the street-crier, and that very indistinctly, although we listened closely. We were forbidden to go up on the tower, and they took away our large sheets, fearing lest, in spite of the thick bars, we should get down from the windows; that was the pretext. They brought us coarse and dirty sheets."
A decree of the Commune dated September 22, 1793, provided that the nourishment of the prisoners should be greatly reduced. At the first meal which followed this decree, Madame Elisabeth, far from complaining, said to her niece : " This is the bread of poor people, and we are poor also. How many un- fortunates have still less ! "
Let us now read in the journal of Marie The're'se the account of the examination to which she was
60 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
subjected some days before her mother's execution : " October 8, at noon, as we were busy in setting our chamber to rights and dressing ourselves, Pache, Chaumette, and David, members of the Convention, with several municipals, arrived. My aunt did not open the door until she was dressed. Pache, turning to me, asked me to go down stairs. My aunt wished to follow me, but she was refused. She asked whether I would come up again. Chaumette assured her of it, saying : ' You may rely on the word of a good republican; she will come up.' I embraced my aunt, who was all in a tremble, and I went down. I was very much embarrassed. It was the first time I had ever found myself alone with men. I did not know what they wanted, but I recom- mended my soul to God."
Madame Elisabeth trembled. Never, since her arrival at the Temple, had she been quite alone there. Deprived, one after another, of her brother, her nephew, and her sister-in-law, was she also to lose the last companion of her captivity? Was her niece also to be torn away and not return? Thus far, those who had gone down had not come up again.
"When I came where my brother was," adds the young Princess, "I embraced him tenderly; but they tore him out of my arms, and told me to go into the other room. Chaumette made me sit down; he placed himself opposite me. . . . He questioned me afterwards about a multitude of
MADAME ELISABETH 61
villanous things of which my mother and my aunt were accused. I was overwhelmed by such horror, and so indignant, that in spite of the fear I experi- enced I could not help saying that it was infamous. There were some things which I did not under- stand; but what I did understand was so horrible that I wept with indignation. They interrogated me about Varennes, and put many questions to which I replied as best I could without compromis- ing anybody. I had always heard my parents say that it was better to die than to compromise any one whomsoever. At last, at three o'clock, my examina- tion ended; it had begun at noon. I ardently entreated Chaumette to let me rejoin my mother, saying truly that I had asked it of my aunt more than a thousand times. 'I can do nothing about it,' he said to me. 'What, sir, can you not obtain per- mission of the Council-General?' 'I have no au- thority there.' He then had me taken back to my room by three municipals, advising me to say nothing to my aunt, who was also to be obliged to go down stairs. . . . On arriving, I threw myself into her arms ; but they separated us and bade her descend. She came up again at four o'clock. Her examina- tion had lasted only one hour, and mine three. That was because the deputies saw they could not intimidate her, as they had hoped to do a person of my age; but the life I had led for more than four years, and the example of my parents, had given me more strength of soul."
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M. Ferrand has said (in the Eloge historique de Madame Elisabeth, published at Ratisbonne in 1794): "All the infamies of which they were about to accuse the Queen with regard to her son, were uttered and repeated before the angelic Elisabeth, as they had been before her niece. They constrained innocence to listen to horrors which outraged nature and caused it to shudder. Doubtless they did not flatter themselves that they could obtain an avowal contrary to truth. But could they even have hoped to surprise certain words which it would be possible to pervert? Madame Elisabeth's defence was like that of Marie The're'se: true, simple, pure as them- selves. After an examination which did not fulfil the expectations of the tormentors, but which will excite execration throughout all time, the two Prin- cesses found themselves once more together, but still terrified by the images with which their chaste imaginations had been sullied. ' O my child ! ' exclaimed Madame Elisabeth, extending her hands to her niece. A sad silence expressed better than any words the sentiments they experienced. For the first time, they avoided each other's glance. At last their lips opened to let the same words escape, and they fell on their knees, as if it were theirs to expiate all that they had blushed to hear."
What had become of Marie Antoinette ? The two captives, who had at first received some tidings of the unfortunate Queen, were soon to be plunged into complete uncertainty. A few tender-hearted
MADAME ELISABETH 63
persons had during several weeks found means at the risk of their lives to convey news to them from the Conciergerie by the aid of Turgy, one of those employed in the interior service of the Temple tower. One of Louis XVI. 's former personal attendants had been courageous enough to make his way inside the Conciergerie. Madame Richard, wife of the prison porter, had taken him by the hand, and, leading him aside, had said: "Trust yourself to me. Who are you? What brings you here? Hide nothing from me." Encouraged by this friendly invitation, Hue made himself known to this woman. She responded kindly to all his questions. "You see the motive which brings me," he said to her. "To give the Queen news of her children, and to inform them and Madame Elisabeth of the Queen's condition, is my only object. It is meritorious in you to second me." Madame Richard promised him and kept her word. She apprised Marie Antoinette that Frangois Hue had penetrated even into her prison. " What ! even here ! " cried the Queen. Success had justified the hardihood of the devoted servitor, and for several weeks he had the consolaton of procuring news of the captive of the Conciergerie for the captives of the Temple. But this soon came to an end. Turgy, the medium of this mysterious correspon- dence, was suspected and sent away from the Tem- ple. Madame Elisabeth addressed him this last note : " October 11, at 2.15. I am very much afflicted; take care of yourself until we are more fortunate and
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can reward you. Take with you the consolation of having well served good and unhappy masters. Advise Fiddle [Toulan] not to risk himself too much for our signals [by the horn]. If by chance you see Madame Mallemain, give her news of us, and tell her I think of her. Adieu, honest man and faithful subject." Two days later, October 13, Hue was arrested. Madame Elisabeth and her niece no longer heard anything. Everybody shrank from adding to the anguish of the Temple the immense grief contained in the message: "The Queen has ascended the scaffold." Marie The'rdse has written in her journal: "My aunt and I were ignorant of my mother's death; although we had heard her condemnation cried out by a street-crier, the hope so natural to the unhappy made us think they had spared her. We refused to believe in a general desertion. Moreover, I do not yet know, how things occurred outside, nor whether I shall ever leave this prison, although they give me hopes of doing so. There were moments when, despite our hopes in the Powers, we experienced the keenest anxieties on account of my mother, seeing the rage of this unhappy people against all of us. I remained in this cruel doubt for a year and a half; it was then only that I learned of the death of my venerated mother."
Let us see now what took place in the Temple after the execution of the Queen, still leaving the nar- ration to the young captive, whose story is more af-
MADAME ELISABETH 65
f ecting than all the memoirs : " We learned the death of the Duke of Orleans from the street-criers ; it was the only piece of news that reached us during the winter. However, the searches began anew, and we were treated with great severity. My aunt, who had had a cautery on her arm ever since the Revolution, had great difficulty in obtaining what was necessary for dressing it; they refused for a long time to give it ; but at last, one day, a municipal officer remon- strated against the inhumanity of such a proceeding, and sent for ointment. They deprived me also of the means to make the decoction of herbs which my aunt made me take every morning for my health. Not having fish any longer, she asked for eggs or other dishes suitable for fast days ; they were refused with the remark that to 'equality' there was no difference between days; that there were no weeks any longer, but only decades. They brought us a new almanac, but we did not look at it.
"Another day when my aunt asked for fast-day food, she was told: 'But, citizeness, you don't seem to know what has happened; only fools believe in all that nowadays.' She did not ask again. The searches were continued, especially in November. It was ordered that we should be searched three times a day. One of them lasted from four until half-past eight o'clock in the evening. The four municipals who made it were thoroughly drunk. No idea can be formed of their remarks, insults, and oaths, dur- ing four hours. They took away trifles, such as our
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hats, cards with kings on them, and some books with escutcheons; however, they left our religious books after making a thousand impure and stupid speeches. . . . They said 'thou ' to us all winter. \Ve de- spised all the vexations; but this last degree of rudeness always caused my aunt and me to blush."
In the midst of so many sufferings, the young Marie The're'se still had one supreme consolation: the presence of Madame Elisabeth. Even into the gloom of the prison this holy woman shed a nameless pure and gentle radiance. The Temple merited its name; it was verily a sanctuary, the sanctuary of piety and sorrow. The conversations between aunt and niece often took place in darkness. The calm- ness of night gave a still more persuasive, affecting accent to the exhortations of the sublime instruc- tress. "The sufferings of this life," said she, "bear no proportion to the future glory they enable us to merit. Has not Jesus Christ gone before us carry- ing His cross? Remember, my child, the words your father addressed you on the eve of the day when, for the first time, you were to receive the blood of the Lamb. He said to you: 'Religion is the source of our happiness and our support in adversity; do not suppose you will be sheltered from it; you know not, my daughter, what Provi- dence has designed for you. ' '
No preacher's sermons could have impressed the imagination or touched the heart of Marie The're'se more profoundly than the counsels of Madame Elisa-
MADAME ELISABETH 67
beth. The young captive read and re-read the prayer-books they had been allowed to keep, and on which the conduct of her aunt was a living com- mentary. "My aunt," she says in her journal, " kept the whole Lent, although deprived of Lenten food ; she ate no breakfast ; at dinner she took a bowl of coffee with milk (it was her breakfast which she kept over), and in the evening she ate nothing but bread. She bade me eat whatever they brought me, as I had not reached the prescribed age for absti- nence ; but nothing could be more edifying for her. She had not failed to observe the duties prescribed by religion, even when refused fasting diet. At the beginning of spring they took away our candle, and we went to bed when we could not see any longer." With the springtime, arrived the period when the orphan of the Temple was to be deprived forever of the consolations of Madame Elisabeth, and to remain alone in her prison.
Ill
THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH
several weeks nothing had happened at _J_ the Temple. The two captives might have believed the tormentors had forgotten them. But what occurred on the 9th of May? Marie The'rdse's journal tells us: "On that day, just as we were going to bed, they drew the bolts and came to knock at our door. My aunt said that she would put on her dress ; they replied that they could not wait so long, and knocked so hard one would think they were breaking in the door. She opened it when she was dressed. They said to her: 'Citizeness, be so good as to go down stairs.' 'And my niece? ' 'She will be attended to afterwards.' My aunt embraced me, and to calm me said she was going to come up again. 'No, citizeness,' said some one, 'you are not coming up again; take your cap and go down.' Then they heaped insults and rude speeches on her ; she endured them patiently, put on her cap, em- braced me again, and told me to preserve courage and firmness, to hope in God always, to profit by the good religious principles my parents had given me, and not fail to observe the last injunctions of 68
THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 69
my father and mother. She went out. On arriving below she was asked for her pockets, which had nothing in them ; this lasted a long time because the municipals drew up a report in order to discharge themselves of responsibility for her person. At last, after many insults, she departed with an usher of the tribunal, got into a cab and arrived at the Concier- gerie, where she passed the night."
The next day, May 10, 1794, Madame Elisabeth appeared before the revolutionary tribunal. Dumas, the president, asked her the following questions: " What is your name ? " — " Elisabeth Marie. " " Your age ? " — " Thirty years. " " Where were you born ? " - " At Versailles. " " Where do you reside ? " — " In Paris." Then the act of accusation was read: —
" Antoine Quentin Fouquier states that the people owe all the evils under whose burden they have groaned for centuries to the Capet family. It was at the moment when excessive oppression had caused the people to break their chains, that this entire family joined their forces to plunge them anew into a still more cruel bondage than that from which they had escaped. The crimes of every sort, the accumu- lated villanies of Capet, the Messalina Antoinette, the two Capet brothers, and of Elisabeth are too well known to make it necessary to retrace the horrible picture here. They are written in the annals of the Revolution in characters of blood, and the unheard-of atrocities exercised by the barbarous SmigrSs or the bloody satellites of despots, the murders, conflagra-
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tions, and ravages; in short, these assassinations unknown to the most ferocious monsters "which they commit upon French territory, are still ordered by this detestable family for the sake of delivering a great nation to the despotism and fury of a few individuals. Elisabeth has shared in all these crimes; she has co-operated in all the plots and conspiracies formed by her infamous brothers, the profligate and shameless Antoinette, and the entire horde of conspirators gathered around them. . . .
" Elisabeth had planned with Capet and Antoinette the massacre of the citizens of Paris on the immortal 10th of August; she kept vigil in the hope of 'wit- nessing this nocturnal carnage, and by her discourse encouraged the young persons whom fanatical priests had conducted to the palace for that purpose. . . . In fine, since the deserved execution of the guilt- iest tyrant who ever disgraced human nature, she has been seen inciting to the re-establishment of tyranny, and lavishing, with Antoinette, the homage of royalty and the pretended honors of the throne on Capet's son."
After reading the act of accusation, the president interrogated Madame Elisabeth. These are some of the questions and answers : —
"Would you tell us what prevented you from going to bed on the night of August 9-10 ? " — "I did not go to bed because the constituent bodies had come to acquaint my brother with the agitation and disorder existing among the inhabitants of Paris."
THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 71
"Did you not assist the assassins sent by your brother to the Champs Elyse*es against the brave Marseillais by dressing their wounds yourself ? " — "I never knew that my brother had sent assassins against any one whatever; if I happened to give aid to any injured persons, I was led to dress their wounds by humanity alone ; I had no need to inquire the cause of their injuries in order to bus}r myself in relieving them; I made no merit of doing so, and I do not imagine that any one can impute it to me as a crime."
President Dumas responded: "Will the accused Elisabeth, whose plan of defence is to deny all she is accused of, have the honesty to admit that she has cherished in young Capet the hope of succeeding to his father's throne, and has thus incited to royahy?" — "I talked familiarly with that unfortunate child, who was dear to me on more than one account, and naturally I administered the consolations which seemed to me calculated to compensate him for the loss of those who had given him life."
Chauveau-Lagarde had the courage to defend the accused afterwards. He said that her replies, far from condemning her, ought to procure honor for her in the sight of all, since they proved nothing but the goodness of her heart and the heroism of her friendship. The intrepid advocate ended his speech by saying that instead of a defence he had nothing to offer for Madame Elisabeth but his apology ; but that, finding it impossible to find one worthy of her,
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he had but one observation left to make, namely, that the Princess who had been the most perfect model of all virtues at the court of France, could not be the enemy of the French.
Then President Dumas furiously apostrophized Chauveau-Lagarde, reproaching him with audacity in daring to speak of the " pretended virtues of the accused, and thus corrupting public morals." It was easy to see that Madame Elisabeth, who until then had remained tranquil, and as it were, insensi- ble to her own danger, was moved by those to which her defender had just exposed himself.
Afterwards, the president put the following ques- tions to the jurors : " Is it certain that there existed plots and conspiracies formed by Capet, his wife and family, his agents and accomplices, in conse- quence of which there have been provocations to for- eign war on the part of allied tyrants, and to civil war in the interior, that aid in the shape of men and money has been furnished to the enemy, troops have been assembled, arrangements been made, and chiefs appointed to assassinate the people, annihilate lib- erty, and re-establish despotism? Is it established that Elisabeth is convicted of all this?" The jurors having responded affirmatively, the holy Princess was condemned to death. That very day, at four in the afternoon, she left the Conciergerie to be taken to the scaffold.
As she was leaving the tribunal, Fouquier-Tin- ville said to the president: "It must be admitted,
THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 73
however, that she has not uttered a complaint." "What has Elisabeth of France to complain of?" answered Dumas, with dismal and sarcastic mirth. " Haven't we formed a court of aristocrats to-day that is worthy of her? Nothing need prevent her from thinking herself still in the salons of Versailles when she finds herself surrounded by a loyal nobility at the foot of the sacred guillotine."
The court of aristocrats mentioned by the public accuser comprised the twenty-three victims con- demned to perish on the same scaffold as the Prin- cess; among others, the Marchioness of Se*nozan, aged seventy-six ; the Marchioness of Crussol d' Am- boise, aged sixty-four; Madame de Montmorin, widow of the Minister of Foreign Affairs; her son, aged twenty; M. de Lome'nie, former Minister of War; and the Countess Rosset. The twenty-four victims were led into the hall of the condemned, to await the fatal cart. There Madame Elisabeth exhorted her companions in torture "with a presence of mind, an elevation, and an unction which fortified them all," as her niece has said. Madame de Montmorin exclaimed through her sobs : " I am most willing to die, but I cannot see my child die." "You love your son," said Madame Elisabeth on this, "and you are unwilling that he should accompany you ! You are going to find the happiness of heaven, and you desire him to remain on this earth where there is now nothing but torments and afflictions ! " At these words the poor mother, filled with the ecstasy
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of martyrdom, clasped her boy in her arms : " Come ! come ! " she cried, " we will ascend the scaffold together."
Madame Elisabeth resumed her pious exhortations. "We are not asked to sacrifice our faith, like the ancient martyrs," said she; "all that is demanded of us is to abandon our miserable life ; let us make this poor offering to God with resignation."
Thus spoke the saintly Princess in the hall of the condemned to death — that long, narrow, gloomy hall, separated from the clerk's office by a door and a glass partition, and furnished only with wooden benches placed against the wall. The sight of the Conciergerie recalled to her memory all that Marie Antoinette had suffered there. As yet no one had found courage to tell the sister of Louis XVI. how the martyr-queen had perished. Her uncertainty con- cerning the fate of the august victim was to last for several minutes longer. She was about to be led to the Place of the Revolution — the place where, as she knew, her brother had been executed, and where a remark made by some one in the crowd was soon to apprise her that the Queen had also suffered.
The last summons is heard. The doors of the prison open. Madame Elisabeth rides in the same cart with Madame de Se'nozan and Madame de Crussol d'Amboise. When she is passing the Pont Neuf, the white handkerchief that covers her head falls off. All eyes turn toward her bare head, and recognize the calmness and serenity of her features.
THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 75
On reaching the Place of the Revolution, — formerly Place Louis XV., — she alights first. The twenty- three other victims follow her. All are ranged in front of the guillotine. All are admirable for their courage. The exhortations of the Princess have been fruitful. The first name called by the execu- tioner is that of Madame de Crussol d'Amboise. She bows to Madame Elisabeth, and says : " Ah ! Madame, if Your Royal Highness would deign to embrace me, I should have all that I desire." " Will- ingly," replies the Princess, "and with all my heart." The other condemned women obtain the same honor. As for the men, they kiss respectfully the hand of Louis XVI. 's sister. The executions begin. Several heads have already fallen when a jeering voice from the crowd pressing around the guillotine cries : " It is all very fine, this salaaming to her; there she is now, like the Austrian woman! " Madame Elisabeth understands. Thus she learns the fate of her sister-in-law, and says to herself, " May we meet again in heaven ! "
The victims ascend the scaffold one after another, and receive the baptism of blood with a pious recol- lection like that of the faithful approaching the table of the Lord. While the knife is severing the heads, Madame Elisabeth recites the De Profundis. She is to be executed last. The tormentors doubtless hope that the sight of twenty-three heads falling before her own will deprive her of courage and dignity to meet her death. They are disappointed
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in their expectation. Dying as she had lived, Madame Elisabeth is sublime up to the last hour, the last minute of her saintly existence. When the twenty-third victim comes to bow before her : " Cour- age and faith in the mercy of God ! " says the sister of Louis XVI. Her turn has come at last.
A sovereign mounting the steps of her throne would be less majestic than the pious Princess climbing those of the scaffold, the pedestal of an undying glory. As they are fastening her to the fatal plank, her fichu falls to the ground and allows a silver medal of the Blessed Virgin to be seen. The executioner's assistant, instead of replacing the fichu on her bosom, attempts to remove this pious emblem. " Cover me, sir, in the name of your mother!" These are the last words of the Princess. Her head falls, but this time the crowd does not give way to its habitual fury. The cries of " Long live the Republic ! " are not heard. Every- body feels that the blood of innocence has just been shed.
It was not until several months later that Marie The'rdse learned the fate of her venerated aunt. When the news was told her, she would not believe it; such a crime seemed incredible, even after all the atrocities of the Terror. Then she wrote in her journal this profoundly touching page, an affecting tribute of eternal gratitude and admiration : " Marie Philippine Elisabeth He'le'ne, sister of King Louis XVI., died May 10, 1794, aged thirty years, after
THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 77
having been always a model of virtue. She gave herself to God at the age of fifteen, and thought of nothing but her salvation. Since 1790, when I was better able to appreciate her, I saw nothing in her but religion, love of God, horror of sin, gentleness, piety, modesty, and a great attachment to her family, for whom she sacrificed her life, never having been willing to leave the King and Queen. In a word, she was a princess worthy of the blood from which she sprang. I cannot say enough concerning the kind actions she performed towards me, and which ended only with her life. She considered and cared for me as if I were her daughter ; and for my part, I honored her as a second mother ; I had promised her all the love of one. They say that we resemble each other very much in countenance. I feel that I have somewhat of her character. May I have all her virtues, and go to rejoin her and my father and mother in the bosom of God, where I doubt not they are enjoying the rewards of a death so meritorious for them!"
IV
SOLITUDE
WHEN Madame Elisabeth departed, Marie The're'se found herself alone in her prison. One after another she had lost all her companions in captivity, — her father, her brother, her mother, and her aunt. Thenceforward began the separate system of confinement, isolation, solitude. What did she then experience ? She herself shall tell us.
" I was left in great desolation when I saw myself separated from my aunt ; I did not know what had become of her, and no one would tell me. I spent a very wretched night, and yet, although I was very anxious about her fate, I was far from believing that I was to lose her in a few hours. Sometimes I persuaded myself that she was to be sent away from France ; but when I remembered how they had taken her, all my fears revived. The next day I asked the municipal officers what had become of her ; they said she had gone to take the air; I renewed my request to rejoin my mother, since I was separated from my aunt, and they replied that they would talk about it." Marie Antoinette had been dead for seven months, and her unhappy daughter did not yet 78
SOLITUDE 79
know she was an orphan ! Not one, even among the most savage Terrorists, had dared to give her the fatal news.
"They came afterwards," adds the young captive, " to bring me the key of the wardrobe containing my aunt's linen; I asked to send her some, as she had none; they told me it could not be done. Seeing that whenever I asked the municipals to take me to my mother or to give me news of my aunt, they always replied that they would talk about it; and remembering that my aunt had told me that if ever I was left alone it would be my duty to ask for a woman, I did so out of obedience, but with repug- nance, feeling sure that I would either be refused, or obtain some vile woman.' In fact, when I did make this request to the municipals, they told me it was unnecessary. They redoubled their severity, and took away the knives they had given me, saying : 'Tell us, citizeness, have you many knives?' — 'No, gentlemen, only two.' 'And have you none in your dressing-case, nor any scissors ?' — 'No, gentlemen.' Another time they took away my tinder-box ; having found the stove hot, they said: 'Might one know why you made a fire?'- — 'To put my feet in hot water.' 'What did you light the fire with?' — 'With the tinder-box. ' ' Who gave it to you ? ' — ' I do not know.' 'Precisely; we are going to take it away from you. We do it for your good, lest you might fall asleep and burn yourself near the fire. You have nothing else? ' — 'No, gentlemen.' Their
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visits and such scenes as this were frequent; but except when I was positively interrogated I never spoke, not even to those who brought my food."
On the day following Madame Elisabeth's death, a man to whom the municipal officers showed great respect, presented himself in the prison of the young Princess. She did not know him. Suspecting that she was in the presence of some powerful individual, she did not speak a word to him, but merely handed him a paper on which these lines were written : " My brother is ill ; I have written to the Convention for permission to nurse him; the Convention has not yet answered me; I reiterate my request." The man was Robespierre. After giving him the paper, the prisoner went on reading without raising her eyes to his face. She thus describes the visit in her journal: "One day there came a man — I think it was Robespierre; the municipals showed him great respect. His visit was a secret for the people in the tower, who either did not know who he was, or were unwilling to tell me; he looked at me insolently, glanced over my books, and after searching with the municipals, he went away."
After her aunt's departure, Marie The're'se spent nearly fifteen months alone, a prey to sadness and the most painful reflections, asking for nothing, and mending even her own shoes and stockings. This graceful and affecting captive in her sixteenth year impresses the imagination and moves the heart. One thinks of her at night, in her cruel solitude,
SOLITUDE 81
listening to some distant noise which may be a signal of deliverance, but is more probably a signal of death. She pays close attention. It is a passer-by, who, in going through the adjoining streets, hums at the risk of his life some royalist refrain, whose echo reaches the prisoner. At other times hawkers cry their odious pamphlets and shameless journals in the darkness, or drunken men chant the Marseil- laise or howl the Ca ira. But there is one angelic voice whose pious harmonies rise above all these human discords. It is that of Madame Elisabeth; the ear does not hear it, but the soul does. The dead woman still speaks. Defuncta adhuc loquitur. And through the silence of solitude and the dark- ness, the echo of this mysterious and sublime voice from beyond the tomb, penetrates the dismal Temple tower and inspires the orphan with the true senti- ments of a Christian. Madame Elisabeth continues in death the work she began in life, and it is she who gives her niece the moral and material energy indispensable to endure such tortures.
In the month of September, 1795, the Duchess of Tourzel, being authorized to pay the prisoner a visit, asked how it was that a person so sensitive as she did not succumb under such a weight of sorrows ; to which question the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette answered: "Without religion it would have been impossible. Religion was my only re- source, and it procured for me the only consolations of which my heart could be susceptible. I had
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preserved my Aunt Elisabeth's books of devotion, I read them, I recalled her counsels to mind, I sought never to deviate from them, and to follow them exactly. On embracing me for the last time and inciting me to courage and resignation, she posi- tively enjoined me to ask that a woman might be placed with me. Although I infinitely preferred solitude to any one they would have given me at the time, my respect for my aunt's wishes did not per- mit me to hesitate. They refused, and I was very glad of it.
" My aunt, who foresaw only too clearly the mis- fortunes in store for me, had accustomed me to wait on myself and to need no assistance. She had so regulated my life that every hour was occupied ; the care of my room, prayer, reading, work, — all had their own time. She had habituated me to make my bed alone, to comb my hair, and dress myself; more- over, she had neglected nothing which could contrib- ute to my health. She made me sprinkle water about, so as to freshen the air of my room, and had also required me to walk very fast for an hour, with a watch in my hand, in order to prevent stagnation of the humors."
The young girl followed these prescriptions of moral and physical hygiene to the letter. It was this that saved her, almost as if by miracle. " For myself," she says in her journal, "I asked nothing but mere necessaries; sometimes they were rudely refused. But I could at least keep myself clean ; I
SOLITUDE 83
had soap and water. I swept the room every day; I had it done by nine o'clock, when they came to bring my breakfast. I had no lights; but in the long days I suffered less from this privation. They would no longer give me books; I had only pious ones and some travels which I had read a thousand times; I had also some knitting, which bored me dreadfully."
Despite an energy truly wonderful in so young a person, the daughter of Louis XVI. came very near dying in the Temple, like her brother. " When she heard the general alarm beaten," says the Duchess of Tourzel in her Memoirs, "she experienced a gleam of hope ; for in her sad condition, any change seemed for the better, since she had no fear of death. One day she thought she had reached the term of her troubles, and she beheld death approaching with the calmness of innocence and virtue. She was so ill that she lost consciousness, and when she awoke as from profound slumber, she knew not how long she had remained in this state. Notwithstanding all her courage, she owned to us that she was so weary of her profound solitude that she said to herself: 'If they should end by putting any person with me who was not a monster, I feel that I could not avoid loving her. ' '
On the day when Robespierre fell — the 9th Ther- mi dor (July 27, 1794) — Marie Th^rSse, alarmed by the tumult whose echoes reached the Temple, thought herself lost. "I heard them beat the general alarm,"
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she says, " and sound the tocsin ; I was very uneasy. The municipals who were at the Temple did not budge. When they brought my dinner, I dared not ask what was going on."
Barras, who had been appointed commander-in- chief of the armed forces by the Convention at the time when, threatened by the riot this Assembly seemed about to perish, marched at noon upon the H6tel-de-Ville, then occupied by the insurgents ; he outlawed them, and arrested Robespierre and his accomplices. Hardly had he been overthrown than Bardre — the Anacreon of the guillotine, as he was called — inveighed against him in the Convention, then in permanent session. "He had the audacity," says Barras, in his still unpublished Memoirs, "to accuse the tyrant of wishing to re-establish the son of Louis XVI. on the throne, and of planning on his own behalf to marry Mademoiselle, the daughter of that monarch. ..." In consequence of Bar£re's statement, and in accordance with that system of lies intended for the people which the most widely diverse governments seem to pass from one to another with the same end of decep- tion in view, the committee spread a rumor that the captives of the Temple, the unhappy children of Louis XVI., had escaped. The two committees, the majority of whom were still Jacobins, had dissem- inated this false report in order to cast a suspicion of royalism on the Thermidorian party.
Barras wished to see with his own eyes how things
SOLITUDE 85
really stood. At six in the morning of the 10th Thermidor he went to the Temple, accompanied by several members of the committees and deputies from the Convention, in full uniform. He wished to show himself, at the head of his cortege, at the principal military stations of Paris and cause the troops to renew their oath to be faithful to the Con- vention. He came to a halt at the Temple station, where he doubled the guard, commanded the munic- ipal officers to remain permanently and exercise the strictest vigilance, and then went up into the great tower, where he successively saw Louis XVII. and his sister.
This is what Marie The'rctee wrote in her journal concerning this visit: "The 10th Thermidor, at six in the morning, I heard a frightful noise at the Temple; the guard called to arms, the drum beat, and the doors opened and closed. All this racket was occasioned by a visit from certain members of the National Assembly, who came to assure them- selves that all was quiet. I heard the bolts of my brother's chamber drawn. I sprang out of bed and was dressed when the members of the Convention reached my room. Barras was among them; they were in full dress, which astonished me, because I was not accustomed to see them so, and was always fearing something or other. Barras talked to me, calling me by my name ; he was surprised to find me up, and said several things to which I made no an- swer. They departed, and I heard them haranguing
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the guards under the windows and telling them to be faithful to the National Convention. There were many shouts of: 'Long live the Republic! Long live the Convention! ' The guard was doubled."
Some hours after the visit of Barras to the Temple, Robespierre and his principal accomplices were con- ducted to the scaffold, amid cries of joy and curses from the people. The next day, llth Thermidor, the committees of Public Safety and General Secu- rity ratified the choice which had made Barras guar- dian of the children of Louis XVI. They decreed that " Citizen Laurent, member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Temple, should be put provision- ally in charge of the tyrant's children." The two committees united in enjoining "the most exact surveillance."
Laurent was installed on the day of his appoint- ment, llth Thermidor, toward half-past nine in the evening, by several members of the municipality. His first care was to visit the prison of Marie The're'se. "I was in bed," she says, "without any light, and not asleep, so anxious was I about what was going on; some one knocked on my door to show me to Laurent, commissioner of the Conven- tion, who had been given charge of my brother and me. I rose, and these gentlemen made a thorough search, showing Laurent everything, and then going away.
" The next day at ten o'clock, Laurent entered my room, and asked me politely whether I needed any-
SOLITUDE 87
thing. He came three times a day, always behaved with civility, and did not say 'thou' to me. He never searched the bureaus and commodes. I very soon asked him for what interested me so keenly, news of my parents, of whose death I was ignorant, and also to be re-united to my mother. He answered with a very sad expression that that was not his affair.
" The next day some men in scarfs came, to whom I put the same questions. They also answered that it was not their affair, and that they could not understand why I did not want to remain here, because it seemed to them that I was very well off. 'It is frightful,' I said to them, 'to be separated from my mother for a year without learning any news of her or of my aunt either.' 'You are not ill? ' - — 'No, sir; but heart sickness is the most cruel of all.' 'I tell you we can do nothing about it; I advise you to be patient, and to hope in the justice and goodness of the French people. ' I said nothing more."
Meanwhile a certain change for the better took place in the attitude of the guardians of the Prin- cess. In speaking of Laurent, she says: "I have nothing but praise for his manners during all the time he was in service. He often asked if I needed anything; he begged me to tell him what I would like, and to ring whenever I required something. He gave back my tinder-box and candle.
"At the end of October (1794), at one o'clock in the morning, I was asleep when some one knocked
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at my door; I arose in haste and opened it trem- bling with fear. I saw two members of the committee with Laurent; they looked at me and went away without saying anything.
" The winter passed quietly enough. I was satis- fied with the civility of my guardians ; they wished to make my fire and gave me all the wood I wanted, which pleased me. They also brought the books I asked for; Laurent had already procured me some. My greatest grief was that I could obtain no news of my mother and my aunt; I dared not ask for any concerning my uncles and my great-aunts, but I thought of them incessantly."
Notwithstanding the comparative amelioration in the rigors of her captivity, Marie The're'se continued to see nobody except her guardians at the hours when they brought her meals, and from time to time the commissioners of the Convention, who came to make sure that she was still a prisoner. The Duch- ess of Tourzel has written in her Memoirs : " I asked Madame one day if she had never been put to incon- venience during the time of her profound solitude. 'My person occupied me so little,' she replied, 'that I did not pay it much attention. ' It was then that she spoke of the fainting-fit which I mentioned above, adding such affecting remarks on the slight esteem she had for life that no one could listen to her without profound emotion. I cannot recall these details unmoved ; but I should reproach myself if I did not make known the courage and generosity
SOLITUDE 89
of this young Princess. Far from complaining of all she had had to suffer in that horrible tower which reminded her of so many woes, she never voluntarily spoke of it, and her memory could never efface from her heart the love of a country she always held so dear." Her parents had taught her to forgive inju- ries. She was as good a Frenchwoman as she was a Christian, and her patriotism alone was equal to her religion.
THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII
WE have just narrated what took place on the third floor of the great tower of the Temple after Marie Antoinette departed to the Conciergerie. Let us now examine what occurred on the second floor of the same tower. Dante's infernal regions present no more horrible spectacle than that of the tortures to which the son of Louis XVI. was sub- jected. His dungeon was not an ordinary prison. It was a sort of foul and repulsive kennel, a place of abomination and desolation, a sepulchre full of terrors, wherein the poor little captive united to the consciousness of life the agonies of a never-ceasing death. The poisonous atmosphere he breathed deprived him of all appetite and corrupted the mis- erable food they brought him. His chamber was no better than a pestilential sewer, infested by rats and mice. Great black spiders crawled over his bed at night. To rid himself of their hideous contact he would rise and sit on his chair, passing the night with his elbows resting on the table. At other times he would fill his hat with the scraps of meat and crusts of bread left from his meals and place 00
THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 91
it in the middle of the floor. There the rats and mice would gather around it and leave him to get a few minutes of repose.
It is said in the work of Simien-Despre'aux, who was informed by Gagnie*, chief cook at the Temple, that "the young Prince led an apathetic existence amid repulsive uncleanliness. . . . His arms, thighs, and legs grew singularly long at the expense of his breast and body ; three tumors, to which no one con- descended to pay the least attention, developed them- selves on his knee, his wrist, and his arm. An acrid and violent humor gathered in them and corroded the flesh; a sort of eruption ate into his neck, and his beautiful chestnut hair seemed to take root, if one may say so, in the cavities formed by the puru- lent humor. . . . His whole neck, from its lower extremity up to the roots of the hair was covered with a persistent eruption, made more painful still because the wretched child, carrying his fingers thither by a natural impulse, scratched it inces- santly, and made the wounds bleed with his nails, which had grown very long."
People supposed that M. de Beauchesne had ex- hausted the subject of Louis XVII. 's martyrdom in his eloquent and affecting book. They were mis- taken. The work published by M. Chantelauze under the title: Louis XVII. , Ms childhood, im- prisonment, and death in the Temple; after unpub- lished documents of the National Archives, has given many new details of this captivity, the most touching
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and doleful made known to us by history. The cob- bler Simon had assuredly been a cruel persecutor to the son of Louis XVI., but the unhappy child had learned to long for this tormentor. Solitary confine- ment was still more terrible than the presence of such a monster. Simon's wife may have been a vixen, but still she sometimes took pity on the little prisoner, and even though she ill-used him, she washed and combed him, she made his bed and swept his room. But on January 19, 1794, the odious guardian, obliged to choose between his functions at the Temple and his position as member of the Council- General, abandoned the first to preserve the second. It was then decided that the cobbler should have no successor. The Simon household disappeared, and after January 20, 1794, the royal child underwent the severest hardships of solitary confinement. It was considered that the whole of the second floor of the great tower would be much too large a prison for him. His quarters were restricted, therefore, to a single room, that at the back, which had been formerly occupied by Cle'ry. The door separating this room from the antechamber was cut in two, breast high, furnished with bars and gratings and iron plates, and secured with nails and screws. On the lower part of the door, at the same height, was fastened a table with two leaves, above which was a wicket of iron cross-bars, closed with a solid pad- lock. Through this wicket the child's coarse meals were passed, watery soups in which a few lentils
THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 98
floated, scraps of dry boiled beef, black bread, and a jug of water, but never any wine. On the edge of this table the little prisoner had to place the earthen vessel which he had used.
Never any fire on the hearth, never any light at night. Darkness, solitude, and terror. Behold the descendant of so many kings, the heir of Saint Louis, Henri IV., and Louis XIV., trembling in every limb, and more to be pitied than the sorriest of beggars. Behold in him the type of grief, a liv- ing corpse, laden with the proof of how far human misery may extend. His legs, on account of the swelling of his knees, are squeezed as in a vice by pantaloons too narrow, which he is compelled to wear both day and night, as he does his ragged gray jacket. Poor child! His dull, his frightful soli- tude is interrupted only by the nightly rounds of the commissioners who come to make personally sure of his presence in the dungeon. "Are you asleep, Capet? Get up! Come here!" And the little prisoner starting out of sleep, almost dead with fear, jumps out of the foot of his bed, and runs with bare feet across the icy floor. " Here I am, citizen ; what do you want of me?" —"To see you; now go back to bed, little whelp." These were the only times when he saw human faces. Treated as if he had the plague or were a leper, he did not even see the hand of the person who thrust his meagre pittance through the hole cut in the door. He never heard any sound but the drawing of the bolts that shut him in. His
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moral sufferings were not less atrocious than his physical ones.
In spite of all that had been done to stultify and debase him, he still retained sufficient intelligence to compare the present with the past, to remember all that he had lost and to be conscious of the depths of the abyss into which he had been precipitated. Listen to the narrative of the victim's sister: "I knew they had had the cruelty to leave my poor brother alone. It was an unheard-of barbarity, which is surely unexampled, to abandon, in this way, an un- fortunate child of eight years, who was already ill, and keep him shut up in his chamber, under lock and bar, with nothing to aid him except a wretched bell which he never rang because he was so afraid of the people he might have summoned, and preferred to do without rather than ask his persecutors for the least thing. He was in a bed which had not been shaken up in six months, and which he was no longer strong enough to make; fleas and other insects covered it, and his linen and person were full of them. His stockings and shirt had not been changed for more than a year. His window, closed with chains and bars, was never opened, and no one could stay in his chamber on account of the foul odor. It is true that my brother neglected himself ; he might have taken a little more care of his person, and at least washed himself, since they gave him a jug of water ; but this unhappy child was dying with fear; he never asked for anything, so much had
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Simon and his other keepers made him tremble. He did nothing all day long. They never gave him any light. This condition was most injurious to his mind as well as his body. It is not surprising that he fell into a frightful consumption. That he had a strong constitution is proved by the time his health remained good, and his long struggle against so many cruelties."
While Madame Elisabeth was still in the tower, there had been a time when Marie The'rdse thought her brother had left the prison. "On January 19," she says in her journal, " we heard a great noise in my brother's apartments, which made us conjecture that he was going to leave the Temple, and we were convinced of it when, by looking through the key- hole, we saw some parcels taken away. On the fol- lowing days we heard the door open and people walking in the chamber, and we remained persuaded that he had gone. We supposed that some distin- guished person must have been put down stairs ; but I afterwards knew that it was Simon who departed. Being forced to choose between a place as municipal officer and that of guardian to my brother, he had preferred the first."
The noise which had occasioned the error of the two captives was made by the men who were at work for two days on Louis XVII. 's narrow dun- geon. They finished it January 21, 1794, the first anniversary of Louis XVI. 's death.
From time to time Marie Th^rdse obtained tidings
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of her brother through certain compassionate souls, the turnkey Baron, and Caron the kitchen servant. But they did not tell her all. It would have caused her too much suffering. Why did they not allow her to go down to the second floor, to open the door of the room where the poor child Avas groaning, and succor, console, care for, and save him? She would have been his good angel, she would have rescued him from misery and death. All that was necessary to accomplish this work of deliverance and salvation was for her to descend a few steps, and she was forbidden to do so! What a torture for this sublime young girl who would so willingly have given her life to save that of her brother !
When Barras visited the Temple, July 27 (10 Thermidor II.), he wished to see the little Prince. The iron door of the dungeon was unfastened, and it turned upon its rusty hinges for the first time in more than six months. The frightened child ex- claimed: "I have no fault to find with my keepers." Barras, stupefied by the horrible sight he witnessed, responded : " For my part, I shall make lively com- plaints about the filthy condition of this chamber." He afterwards questioned the young Prince very gently about the state of his health.
The little prisoner complained of very severe pains in his knees and of not being able to bend them. Barras saw for himself that a tumor had produced great damage there, and that the condition of the child, who had lost appetite and could not sleep, was
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hopeless. Crushed and broken down by suffering, his body bent double like that of an old man, his eyes dull and his face pallid, the son of kings looked like a spectre. Where now were the days when, under the trees of Versailles, the Tuileries, or Saint Cloud, he seemed so graceful with his soft, deep eyes, his curling hair, his transparent complexion, brilliant and glowing as if lighted by an inward flame? What had become of that radiant, angelic child, beautiful as his mother or as the day ? Job's dunghill was less lamentable than the sewer where groaned this little innocent.
In spite of the reaction that was beginning, the men of Thermidor were still savages. As a rumor was spreading to the effect that a change for the better was to be made in the condition of the chil- dren of Louis XVI., the Committee of General Security had just declared in presence of the Con- vention that it had issued no instructions that could be so construed. "The Committee," said they, "have absolutely no thought of ameliorating the captivity of Capet's children. The Committee and the Convention know how the heads of kings are made to fall ; but they do not know how their chil- dren are to be brought up."
In spite of the injunctions of Barras, Laurent, the new guardian of Louis XVII., either through negligence or fear of compromising himself, allowed a month and four days to elapse before cleaning the wretched child's room. September 1, 1794, with
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the assistance of several persons, and especially of Gagnie', the chief cook, he unclosed the iron door and broke the round wicket. The little prisoner trembled like a leaf on hearing the sound of the hammers and the grinding of the bolts. They found him extended on his miserable pallet, pale, livid, with lack-lustre eyes, bent back, arms and legs far too long for his age, his wrists and ankles swollen by tumors, and the nails of his hands and feet as long as those of a wild beast. On a little table lay his dinner which he had not touched. Gagnie' said to him: "Monsieur Charles" —they no longer called him Capet — "why don't you eat? You ought to eat." "No, my friend," replied the child; "no, I want to die." Caron, the cook's assistant, cut his hair which had stuck fast in his sores. His nails, which were as hard as horn, were likewise trimmed. They took off his vermin-covered clothing and installed him in the chamber formerly occupied by his father until his own should be thoroughly cleansed. Some of the window-blinds were removed, so that more light could enter, and the sashes were opened to admit air. Clean linen was substituted for his half-rotten sheets. One of the two beds in his sister's apartment was brought down stairs and the little prisoner laid upon it. A surgeon came from time to time to wash and dress his sores. When his room had been cleaned the child was put back there, but they left him all alone.
Marie The'rtlse still had no communication with
THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 99
her brother. She was destined never to see him again. It was formally forbidden that the brother and sister should take their walk at the same time. Not only were they never to be allowed to meet, but their guardians were bidden to conceal from them that they were detained in the same place. Louis XVII. never heard any tidings of his sister, and if Marie The'rdse occasionally obtained a few details concerning him, it was only through some departure from the strictest orders. No change in their food had yet been permitted. The decree of Septem- ber 23, 1793, which condemned them to the same wretched fare as was given to thieves and assassins, had been rigorously observed. Even the half-bottle of wine to which Louis XVII. was entitled by this decree, and which was given to his sister, was with- held from him. And during all this time, the mu- nicipal officers and the jailers were feasting from morning to night at the expense of the State.
Weakened and ricketty as he was, no longer more than a sort of phantom, the unhappy child was still, in the eyes of all Europe and of many Frenchmen, His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France and Navarre. Even in Paris itself the poor little pris- oner had numerous partisans. This puny child alarmed the terrible Convention. At no price would they grant him his liberty. In the session of January 22, 1795, Cambaceres, in the name of the two Com- mittees, read a report which concluded thus: "An enemy is much less dangerous when he is in your
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power than when he has passed into the hands of those who sustain his cause or have embraced his party. Let us suppose that Capet's heir should find himself in the midst of our enemies ; you would soon find him present at every point where our legions had enemies to combat. Even should he cease to exist, he would be found again everywhere, and this chimera would long serve to nourish the guilty hopes of Frenchmen who are traitors to their coun- try. . . . There is little danger in holding Capet's family in captivity; there is much in expelling them. The expulsion of tyrants has almost always prepared the Avay for their return, and if Rome had detained the Tarquins, she would not have had to combat them."
Meanwhile the Vende'ans were fighting in the name of Louis XVII., and in Paris the secret police agents declared there was a rising public sentiment in favor of the young Prince. His name was spoken in market-places and suburbs. Everybody felt inter- ested in what was done at the Temple. Sometimes it was said the little prisoner had been abducted, nnd sometimes that he was soon to be proclaimed king. These verses were posted up in the National Garden : —
" Guilty nation, gone astray, And to cruel plagues a prey, Wouldst thou from thy bosom chase Famine, dearth, and all their race ? Put the baker's journeyman In his father's shop again."
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A certain change for the better had been effected in the treatment of the son of Louis XVI. Gomin, appointed Laurent's assistant, November 8, 1794, and Lasne, who replaced Laurent, April 1, 1795, showed him a respect to which he had long been unaccustomed. His cruel solitude was interrupted now and again. They brought him cards and chatted with him. They took him up to the plat- form of the tower to breathe a little fresh air. But all this came too late. Crushed by anguish, the child was irrevocably doomed. The attentions of Gomin and Lasne could not possibly avail. The Duchess of Tourzel writes in her Memoirs : " Gomin told me that when the young Prince was placed in their hands his neglected condition not only made him painful to behold, but occasioned most disa- greeable troubles to himself. He had fallen into a state of continual absorption, spoke little, and was unwilling either to walk or to occupy himself with anything whatever. And yet he had some surpris- ing flashes of genius. He liked to quit his room, and was pleased when they took him into the coun- cil-chamber and seated him near the window. Poor Gomin, who in spite of his good-will was unskilled in the care of the sick, did not at first perceive that this absorption proceeded from a malady by which the poor little Prince had been attacked, and was the result of ill treatment and the lack of air and exercise, even more necessary to this child than to another; for in speaking of the beauty of face which
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outlasted his life, he praises the two rosy apples on his cheeks, which but too plainly announced the internal fever wasting him. But he was not slow to perceive that all the child's joints were swollen, and he asked more than once to have a doctor exam- ine him. No attention was paid to his entreaties, and Desault, chief surgeon at the H6tel-Dieu, was not sent there until his aid had become entirely useless."
On May 6, 1795, Doctor Desault, one of the most celebrated physicians of the day, arrived at the Temple, and lavished all his cares on the innocent victim. The young Prince showed his gratitude to the good doctor by breaking the silence he observed with his jailers and the municipal commissioners. When these persons announced that the visit must end, the child, unwilling to ask them to prolong it, held fast to the tail of Desault's coat. But the doctor's death was to precede that of the young invalid. "Desault," says the Duchess of Tourzel, " experienced the keenest emotion on beholding the deplorable state to which the august and unfortunate child had been reduced. He had the greatest desire for his recovery, and employed all his skill to that effect. His whole mind was bent on it; he slept neither day nor night, and spent all his time in seek- ing some means by which it might be accomplished. His imagination became so overheated that his health suffered in consequence. He experienced great physical disturbance which his fear of being super-
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seded by some one whose sentiments would be dif- ferent, made him undertake to quell; his humors inflamed, and he was attacked by a dysentery which carried him to the grave in a few days." Desault fell seriously ill in the night of May 29-30, and died on June 1. Strange rumors got into circula- tion concerning this sudden death. Some claimed that the doctor had been poisoned because he refused to poison the little Prince. Others tried to spread the absurd report that having obeyed a secret order to administer slow poison to the young invalid, he had been poisoned in his turn so as to efface the traces of his crime.
Louis XVII. finally reached the end of his mis- eries. "My brother's malady grew worse daily,"- writes Marie There'se; "even his mind felt the effects of the severity used towards him, and insen- sibly weakened. The Committee of General Secu- rity sent Doctor Desault to attend him ; he undertook his cure, although he recognized that the malady was very dangerous. Desault died, and was suc- ceeded by Dumaugin and Surgeon Pelletan. They entertained no hopes of his recovery. He was given medicines which he swallowed with difficulty. Happily, his malady did not cause him much suffer- ing ; it was a case of prostration and decline, rather than of acute pains." Alas! this final sentence testifies to an illusion on the part of the young Prin- cess. The wretched child experienced the most cruel tortures to the very end of his life. "How
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unhappy I am to see you suffer like that!" said Gomin to him. "Console yourself," replied the little martyr; "I shall not suffer always." A few minutes before yielding up his soul, he turned his head toward his two guardians, and feebly mur- mured his last words : " Put me in a place where I shall not suffer so ! "
Marie The're'se ends her journal in the Temple by mentioning this death in the following words : " Thus died, June 9, 1795, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Louis XVII., aged ten years and two months. The commissioners wept bitterly, so much had he made himself beloved by them for his amiable qualities. He had possessed much intelligence, but the prison and the horrors he had been subjected to had greatly altered it; even if he had lived, it is to be feared that his mind would have been affected.
" I do not believe that he was poisoned, as people said and continue to say; that is false according to the testimony of the physicians who opened the body, and found not the least trace of poison. The drugs he had been using in his last illness were analyzed and found innocuous. The only poison which shortened his life was uncleanliness joined to horrible treatment, cruelty, and the unexampled severity exercised towards him.
" Such has been the life and death of my virtuous relatives during their sojourn in the Temple and other prisons.
"Done at the Temple tower."
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The death of the poor little Prince was concealed from Marie The'rese for a considerable time. The child was lying inanimate within a few steps of her, in the very room beneath her own, and she did not know it; she was as ignorant of this death as she still remained of those of Marie Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth. When, several weeks later, she learned that she had lost her mother, her aunt, and her brother, she remained inconsolable because she had not been able to nurse the innocent victim who had suffered so much.
During all the nights preceding his death the poor child had been left alone. His guardians were permitted to see him only in the daytime. He breathed his last sigh in Lasne's arms at three in the afternoon. If he had expired in the night, he would have passed away in absolute solitude. The bar- barous regulation which forbade his being watched at night was not repealed until he had been dead some hours. His body was placed on a stretcher, earned to the cemetery of Saint Marguerite, and thrown into the common grave. Thus ended the descendant and heir of Louis XIV.
Even this did not fill the measure of calamities and painful memories for the daughter of Louis XVI. She was still to be tormented all her life by importunate claimants who called themselves Louis XVII., and pursued her with incessant demands. She declared one day that she had received letters from twenty-eight different persons, each of whom said he
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was her brother. The history of these pretenders does not enter into the design of this study. M. Chantelauze, in his conscientious and remarkable work, and M. Ernest Bertin, in some excellent articles published in the Dtbats of January 17, 27, and 31, 1885, have annihilated the fables which can no longer play on public credulity. It was Regnault Warin, a writer completely forgotten now, who settled the vocation of most of the pretended Louis XVII.s by a romance called Le Cimetiere de la Made- leine, which he brought out in 1798. In it he pre- tends that two of Chare tte's emissaries had brought a child stupefied by opium into the Temple, conceal- ing him inside a hobby-horse presented to the little Prince, and that having substituted this child for Louis XVII., the latter was carried away in the packing-basket that had contained the wooden horse. According to the same romance, Louis XVII., after having been first called for and then rejected by the Vende'an army, embarked for America, was captured at sea, brought back to France, and thrown into prison, where he died. " The romancer killed Louis XVII.," says M. Ernest Bertin; "the claimants did not carry their plagiarism so far. The wooden horse was what chiefly impressed their imaginations, and all of them got into it to make their escape from the Temple."
The most famous of these pretenders was Naun- dorff, who died in Holland, August 10, 1845. In August, 1850, his widow and orphans summoned the
THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 107
Duchess of Angouleme and the children of the Duke of Berry before the Seine tribunal to claim their descent from Louis XVI. They lost their cause in 1851, appealed it in 1874, and lost it again. Those interested in this strange trial may read the details of it in the G-azette des Tribunaux.
The work of M. Chantelauze confirms by definite facts and probable arguments the conclusions reached by French magistrates. The historian has made special use of the testimonies collected by Count Angles, prefect of police, during an inquest ordered by Louis XVIII. at the beginning of the second Restoration, whose special aim was to seek out, interrogate, and recompense all persons who had shown any humanity in their dealings with the pris- oners of the Temple. M. Chantelauze discovered the reports of these interrogatories in the pigeon- holes of the National Archives, and they furnished him the means whereby to destroy the legends of the false Louis XVII. The testimony of Simon's widow and the dumbness of the child who died in the Temple, had been relied on to prove it possible that the son of Louis XVI. might have escaped. Simon's widow had alleged, in 1817, that Doctor Desault, on seeing the corpse of the pretended Louis XVII., had said he did not recognize the body of the young Prince. Now, this woman had either forgotten or did not know that Desault died June 1, 1795, eight days before Louis XVII. The story of the dumb child was no better founded. Numerous persons.
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among them Gomin and Lasne the keepers, and Commissioners Bellanger and Dumont, declared they had heard Louis XVII. speak during his last days. Two of the pretended sons of Louis XVI., Riche- mont and Nauiidorff, asserted that they had been rescued by the Count of Frotte*. Richemont said his rescue was effected in June, 1794. Now, in a letter addressed to a Mrs. Atkym, in March, 1795, M. de Frott£ speaks regretfully of the impossibility of such a deliverance. Naundorff affirmed that he had been saluted as king in the midst of Charette's soldiers. Now, in 1796, Charette in an official proc- lamation accused the republicans of having caused Louis XVII. to perish in prison.
Yes, the true Louis XVII., as we believe, is the unhappy child who died in the Temple, June 9, 1795. But is not the very fact of the doubts that have been entertained about his death and the mystery that surrounds his remains in the common grave a striking one ? How could the son of Bour- bons and of Hapsburgs, the heir of Saint Louis, Henri IV., and Louis XIV., the child whose cradle had been encircled by so many adulators, the Dau- phin of ideal beauty and rare intelligence, who was never shown to the crowd without exciting general admiration and enthusiasm, disappear thus into si- lence and profound darkness! Who are they who identify the descendant of so many kings ? Are they high and mighty lords, or personages entrusted with great court appointments ? No ; they are poor peo-
THE LAST DATS OF LOUIS XVII 109
pie, obscure wardens, men of the lower classes. Compare the death of Louis XVII. with his birth. How many things had changed in ten years! what more striking example than this of worldly vicissi- tudes !
VI
THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY
news of Louis XVII. 's death caused a pro- found impression. Worn out by its own fury, even the. Convention felt its anger lessen and its hatred weaken. June 18, 1795, a deputation from the city of Orleans came to its bar to demand that the daughter of Louis XVI. should be set at liberty, in a petition which contained these words : " Citizen representatives, while you have broken the chains of so many victims of a suspicious and cruel policy, a young unfortunate condemned to weep, deprived of all consolation, all support, reduced to lament for all she held most dear, the daughter of Louis XVI., still languishes in the depths of a horrible prison. So young and yet an orphan, so young and yet over- whelmed by. so much bitterness and so many griefs, how painfully she has expiated the misfortune of her august birth ! Alas ! who would not take pity on so many woes, so much affliction, on such innocence and youth?"
The petition terminated thus : " Come, let us all surround this enclosure; form a pious cortege, ye Frenchmen susceptible to pity, and ye who h 110
THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 111
received benefits from this unhappy family; let us mingle our tears, lift our supplicating hands and demand liberty for this young innocent, and our voices will be heard; you Avill surely grant it, citizen representatives, and Europe will applaud that resolution, and this day will be for us, and for all France, a day of joy and gladness."
A few weeks earlier the authors of such a petition would have been condemned to death, and now they were allowed to express their wishes at the bar of the Convention. An undeniable reaction in people's minds had set in. From this period the severity of Marie The'rdse's captivity was notably relaxed. We find the details of these ameliorations in Fra^ois Hue's book: Les Dernieres Annies de Louis XVI. ; in the Duchess of Tourzel's Memoirs; and in two masterly works, M. de Beauchesne's Louis XVII. , and the Vie de Marie ThSrese de France by M. Nettement.
The solitude of the Temple orphan came to an end. A decree of the Committee of Public Safety, dated June 13, 1795, decided " that a woman should be placed with the daughter of Louis Capet to serve as her companion*" and the Committee, making its choice between " three women commendable for their moral and republican virtues," selected "Citizeness Madeleine Elisabeth Rende Hilaire La Rochette, wife of Citizen Bocquet de Chantereine, living in Paris at No. 24 rue des Rosiers, section of the Rights of Man." This woman was about thirty years of age.
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In the references with which she was furnished, it is said : " Her manners are gentle and good, and her appearance modest. Although she has lived a long time in the country, she is not out of place in the city. Her associates, without being very brilliant, have always been very select. She speaks French well, and writes it easily and correctly. She knows Italian also, and a little English. The study of languages, history, geography, music, and drawing, and the useful and amusing labors proper to her sex have been the occupation of her life. Her commune, which she never left until within a few months, is that of Gouilly, near Meaux. She was notable there for her popularity, and her patriotism has never been suspected."
Marie The're'se heartily welcomed Madame de Chantereine. At last she met a woman who would tell her the truth concerning those she held so dear. The following dialogue took place between the young Princess and her new companion : " Where is my mother?" —"Madame has no longer a mother." "And my brother ?" — " And no brother." "And my aunt?" — "And no aunt." "What! Elisabeth too? But of what could they accuse her?"
July 28, 1795, Madame de Chantereine wrote to the Committee of Public Safety: "Citizen repre- sentatives, I have deferred writing you until now, in order to gain time and means to give you correct ideas of my conduct toward the daughter of Louis Capet, with whom the Committee has placed me.
THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 113
From the first moments of my arrival I flattered myself that my attentions would be successful; to-day I dare assert that they have surpassed my hopes; I owe this to the excellent sentiments of my companion. I can but praise her, although I aid her but little. Her estimable virtues are even pre- cocious. Her amiable qualities and her talents need only to be developed and exercised. She unites firmness and energy of soul to a touching sensibility of heart."
The amelioration in the young prisoner's condition coincided with Madame de Chantereine's arrival at the Temple. A decree of June 20, 1795, permitted some clothes to be given to the daughter of Louis XVI. At last she could discard her puce-colored silk frock which was all in tatters, and which she had constantly been mending for more than a year. "Her dress was now very suitable," says Gomin the keeper. " In the morning, while in her chamber, she wore a white dimity gown; in the daytime, one of nankeen; on Sundays she wore cambric, and on all solemn holidays she put on a green silk robe. Her beautiful hair, so abundant that the fashionable women of the period declared she wore a wig, hung down as of old in a pleasing negligence, confined sometimes by a ribbon and sometimes by a fichu fastened at her forehead."
The young Princess was provided with paper, pencils, India ink, brushes, Velly's History of France, Fontenelle's The Worlds, the works of
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Racine and Boileau, and the letters of Madame de SeVigne* and Madame de Maintenon. Her keepers were permitted to let her go down into the Temple garden. A little spaniel which Laurent had given her followed her. The young captive could then be seen from the upper windows of the neighboring houses.
Quite close to the tower and the garden there was a large oval-shaped house, known as the Rotunda, which was within the Temple precincts. The loyal Frangois Hue made haste to hire a room in it, so as to be able to look at the Princess when she walked in the garden. He says : " I could see Madame from my windows, and I could be seen there ; she could even hear a song sung in my room which announced that her prison doors were soon to open : —
'"Be calm, unhappy one, These doors will open soon ; Soon from thy chains set free, 'Neath radiant skies thou'lt be. Yet when from this abode Of grief thou tak'st thy road, Remember that e'en there, True hearts made thee their care.'
" The author of this ballad was M. Lepitre, a municipal officer. I also brought Mademoiselle de Bravannes there so that her music might afford some diversion to this angel of sweetness and virtue. Besides a composition of her own called the Com- plaint of the Young Prisoner, of which both words
THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 115
and music were produced for the occasion, she sang various other pieces. People sang also in" the win- dows of the houses on the rue de la Corderie, which ran along the Temple enclosure on the tower side. In spite of their sympathy for the Princess, the two keepers, Gomin and Lasne, felt it their duty to ap- prise the Committee of Public Safety of this har- monious conspiracy. They wrote as follows, August 11, 1795: "Citizen representatives, we have noticed to-day that a ballad has been sung from the win- dows in the rue de la Corderie, which look into the garden. As it seemed to us that this romance was sung when the young prisoner was seen, we walked in a different direction. Health and fraternity."
August 15, 1795, the name-day of Marie The're'se, the singing began again at the window of Francois Hue's room in the Rotunda. The Princess was pleased with this attention, and walked longer than usual in the garden. Two days later, Gomin was summoned before the Committee of Public Security. " So they are giving concerts," some one said to him. "Citizens," he replied, "it is an actress who is rehearsing her parts." The matter was dropped for the time being. But the government indirectly warned FranQois Hue that the homage paid to mis- fortune would be respected only if things went no farther. Thereupon the singing ceased, and did not begin again until several weeks later. On August 25, in honor of the feast of Saint Louis, Marie The>c!se hoped to hear again the song which had
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moved her so much on Assumption Day. In this expectation she went down to the garden, but she heard no music, and was saddened and made uneasy by the silence.
September 3, 1795, the third anniversary of the massacres, those horrible preludes to still greater crimes, the young captive was visited at the Temple by two women for whom she entertained great affec- tion, but the sight of whom recalled most painful memories. These were the Marchioness of Tourzel, who had been governess to the royal children, and was given the rank of Duchess by Louis XVIII., in 1816, and her daughter Pauline, who had been the childish companion of the Princess.
The Marchioness of Tourzel, the daughter of the Duke of Cray-Havre", and a Montmorency-Luxem- bourg, was at this period forty-six years old. She was a model of piety, devotion, and courage. On the day after the taking of the Bastille, she suc- ceeded, as governess to the children of France, the Duchess of Polignac, who then emigrated. Her susceptibility to the afflictions of the royal family, and the sight of the abandonment in which they were left by the departure of so many of those who had surrounded them, induced Madame de Tourzel to accept this perilous position. As her daughter has written in her Souvenirs de quarante ans, "she resigned herself to the sacrifice demanded of her. At that time it was a sacrifice and a very great one ; many of the woes hidden by the future might already
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be foreseen." Marie Antoinette said to the new governess : " Madame, I have confided our children to friendship; I confide them now to virtue." Ma- dame de Tourzel witnessed the scenes of October 5-6, 1789, the whole Varennes journey, the tragedies of June 20 and August 10, 1792, and all the agonies of the death-struggle of royalty. She followed the royal family into the box of the Logographe and the convent of the Feuillante. It was in the latter that the Queen, before whom some one had just named the Temple, said to her in an undertone : " You will see that they will put me into that tower, and make it a real prison for us. I have always had such a horror of that tower that I have begged the Count of Artois a thousand times to have it torn down, and it was surely a presentiment of all we are to suffer there." And as the governess of the royal children sought to banish such an idea from the hapless mother's mind, Marie Antoinette replied: "You will see whether I am mistaken ! " Alas ! she was not.
Madame de Tourzel had entered the Temple with the royal family, August 13, 1792. But, to her great despair, she was torn away from there during the night of August 19-20, for she longed for cap- tivity as others long for liberty. It was only as by miracle that she escaped the blade of the Septem- brists. During the examination to which she was subjected, she was reproached for having accom- panied the Dauphin, her pupil, to Varennes. She
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was courageous enough to reply: "I had taken an oath never to leave him ; I could not separate from him. Moreover, I was too much attached to him not to endeavor to preserve his life, even at the cost of my own." At the Force prison, a man, observing a ring on her finger, asked her to read aloud the motto on it. She complied: " Domine salvum fac Regem Delphinum et Sororem ! Lord, save the King, the Dauphin, and his sister! " The crowd appeared angry. Some one cried out: "Throw the ring on the ground!" "Impossible!" returned the govern- ess of the children of France. "All I can do, if you dislike to see it, is to put it in my pocket. I am tenderly attached to Mgr. the Dauphin and to Madame. For several years the former has been under my especial care, and I love him as my own child; I cannot deny the sentiments of my heart, and I am sure you would despise me if I were to do what you propose."
Madame de Tourzel and her daughter Pauline were again incarcerated in March, 1794, and did not leave their prison until the end of October of the same year, three months after the death of Robes- pierre. She hardly says a word concerning this last captivity in her Memoirs. It is only the afflictions of the royal family that concern her. " We had the grief of weeping for Madame Elisabeth, that angel of courage and virtue. She was Madame 's support, aid, and consolation. We experienced the keenest anxiety for the young Princess. We imagined that
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sensitive heart, all alone in the horrible tower, left to herself, and without consolation in the midst of the greatest griefs the heart can feel. Our own hearts were torn with anguish at the thought of her situa- tion and that of our dear little Prince, both treated with unexampled barbarity, and deprived even of the comfort of weeping together over the miseries that overwhelmed them. We never even thought of complaining of our own lot, for we were too much occupied with that of the young King and Madame."
On the 3d of September, 1795, Madame de Tour- zel, after many requests, at last obtained from the Committee of Public Safety an authorization to enter the Temple with her daughter and pay a visit to Madame Royale. "I asked Gauthier," she writes in her Memoirs, "if Madame had been made ac- quainted with the losses she had sustained. He said she knew nothing about them, and during the whole way from the Committee, which sat in the Hotel de Brienne, to the Temple, we were dreading our probable task of apprising her that she had lost all she held most dear in the world.
" On arriving at the Temple, I presented my per- mission to Madame's two keepers, and asked for a private interview with Madame de Chantereine. She told me that Madame knew the extent of her misfortunes and that we might enter. I begged her to inform Madame that we were at the door. I dreaded the effect that might be produced on the Princess by the sight of two persons who, at her
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entrance into the Temple, accompanied thof^e who were dearest to her, and whose death she was forced to lament. Happily, the emotion she experienced had no injurious results. She advanced to meet us, embraced us tenderly, and led us to her chamber, where we mingled our tears over the objects of our regrets."
It is easy to understand that the interview between the young Princess and her former govern- ess must have "been pathetic. What dismal things they had to tell each other! If the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, the niece of Madame Elisabeth, and the sister of Louis XVII., could recount the dramas of the Temple to Madame de Tourzel, the latter could relate those of the Force prison ; she could speak of the Princess of Lamballe, whose companion in captivity she had been up to the hour of her massacre. The governess of the children of France had suffered as much as the royal family. Of how many victims was she not about to retrace the tragic end ! What fatal tidings had she not to give the youthful captive! Oh! what a glance into the past! What sinister details! What oceans of tears ! Can one imagine more pain- ful confidences, a more heartrending dialogue ? The very surroundings, that fateful, horrible tower itself, lent additional sadness to the words exchanged. The mere sight of Madame de Tourzel reminded the prisoner of all the catastrophes of terrible years : of the October Days, the Varennes journey, of June 20
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and August 10, of the assassination of the Swiss, the arrival at the Temple, and the September mas- sacres.
Madame de Tourzel, on her part, experienced sen- timents of admiration, veneration, and tenderness, on beholding the orphan of the Temple. She would have liked to kneel at the feet of the heroic and angelic Princess, whose brow seemed to her sur- rounded by an aureole. She says: "We had left Madame feeble and delicate, and on seeing her again at the end of three years of unexampled woes, we were greatly astonished to find her beautiful, tall, and strong, and with that air of nobility which is the chief characteristic of her appearance. Pauline and I were struck with her likeness to the King, the Queen, and even Madame Elisabeth. Heaven, which destined her to be the model of that courage which, while detracting nothing from sensibility, nevertheless renders the soul capable of great actions, did not permit her to succumb under such a weight of sorrows.
" Madame spoke of them to us with angelic sweet- ness. We did not perceive the faintest touch of bitterness against their authors. The worthy daugh- ter of her royal father, she compassionated the French people, and continued to love the country where she had been so unhappy. In reply to my remark that I could not help desiring her departure from France, so as to see her delivered from her frightful captivity, she sorrowfully responded: 'I
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still feel consolation in living in a country that possesses the remains of what was dearest to me on earth.' And in a heart-breaking tone she added: 'I should have been much happier to share the fate of my beloved relatives than to be condemned to bewail their loss.' '
Marie The're'se spoke first of the martyr-king. " My father, " said she, " before leaving us forever, made us all promise never to think of avenging his death, and he was very sure that we would consider it a sacred duty to fulfil his last desire. But my brother's extreme youth made him anxious to pro- duce a still stronger impression on him. He took him on his knee and said: 'My son, you heard what I have just said, but as an oath is something still more sacred than a promise, lift your hand and swear that you will accomplish your father's last will. ' '
"After speaking of Louis XVI., the orphan spoke of Louis XVII. and the ill usage to which he was subjected daily. 'That barbarous Simon,' said she, 'maltreated him in order to force him to sing the Carmagnole and other detestable songs, so that the Princesses could hear him; and although he had a horror of wine, he forced him to drink it whenever he wished to intoxicate him. ' That is what occurred on the day when he obliged him to repeat in pres- ence of Madame and Madame Elisabeth the horrors that were brought up during the trial of our unhappy Queen. At the close of this atrocious scene, the wretched little Prince, who was beginning to get
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sober, approached his sister and took her hand to kiss it; the hideous Simon, seeing this, begrudged him that slight consolation and carried him hastily away, leaving the Princesses dismayed by what they had just witnessed."
The young captive afterwards related with pro- found emotion all she owed to her aunt, Madame Elisabeth. "These details, so interesting to hear from Madame's lips," says the governess of the chil- dren of France, "affected us to tears; we admired the courage of that holy Princess, and the foresight which included all that could be useful to Madame. . . . Not content to occupy herelf with her own dear ones, she employed her last moments in prepar- ing those condemned to share her fate to appear before God ; she practised the most heroic charity up to the very moment when she went to receive the recompense promised to virtue as tried and brilliant as that • of this holy Princess had been. Madame had difficulty in believing that she had really lost her. She had never believed that fury could be pushed to such a point as to shorten the life of a Princess who could never have taken any part in the government. ... It was different with the Queen. She had too often seen her spitefully entreated ; her courage, and her title as mother to the young King were too much feared to permit any hope to be enter- tained of reunion with her. Hence their farewells had been heartrending."
After conversing thus about her family, Marie
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The're'se asked for tidings of all those who had been attached to her, as well as to the Queen and the royal family, and especially of the young girls she had formerly seen with her governess. She forgot nothing which could interest them. Madame de Tourzel and her daughter afterwards took leave of the Princess, promising to return to the Temple three times every ten days, as the Committee of Public Safety had given them permission to do.
The same authorization was granted to the Baron- ess of Mackau, under-governess to the children of France, whose daughter, the Marchioness de Bom- belles, had been Madame Elisabeth's best friend. Gomin has thus described their first visit to the Temple: "Madame de Mackau, who was very old, and whose health had declined through her long imprisonment, appeared to be suffering and hardly able to stand. Madame, who had been notified of her arrival, yielded to her impatience, and running to meet her, threw herself into her arms. The former under-governess tried to excuse herself for not having reached the tower before Madame had quitted her apartment. 'What! ' cried Madame, 'could I have deferred for a moment the pleasure of embracing you?' 'It is true,' replied Madame de Mackau, 'that Madame has come down stairs much faster than I could have gone up. ' 'It is three years one month and one day since I had the happiness of seeing you, ' cried the Princess, embracing her gov- erness ; then, taking her arm she passed it under her
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own with affectionate grace, and thus assisted her to walk." Having conducted her to tho third story of the tower, she expressed herself nearly in these words : " Let us weep, but not for my relatives ; their task is ended and they have received its recom- pense; no one will ever take away the crown God has now placed on their heads. Let us pray, not for them, but for those who caused them to perish. As for me, these bitter years have not been unfruitful ; I have had time to reflect before God and with my own self. I am stronger against evil. I am far from confounding the French nation with those who have torn from me all I loved best in the world. Certainly, I should be charmed to leave my prison, but I would prefer the tiniest house in France to the honors which would everywhere else attend a Princess so unfortunate as I."
On the day following her first visit to the Temple, the Marchioness of Tourzel wrote a letter to Louis XVIII. In his response he charged her to sound Marie The'rese concerning his desire to marry her to his nephew, the Duke of AngoulSme, the son of the Count of Artois. This marriage harmonized so well with the attachment the young Princess bore towards her family, and even towards France which had treated her so badly, that she was inclined to it on her own account. " Another motive which appealed powerfully to her heart," adds Madame de Tourzel, "was the express wish of her father and mother to conclude this marriage immediately on the return of
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the Princes, and I repeated to her the Queen's own words at the time when Their Majesties honored me with their confidence by speaking of their projects in this matter. ' Some persons have taken pleas- ure in giving my brothers unfavorable impressions of my sentiments toward them. We shall prove the contrary by giving my daughter's hand at once to the Duke of Angouleme in spite of her extreme youth, which might have made us wish to defer it longer. ' '
Marie The're'se listened with emotion, and asked why her parents had never spoken to her of the projected marriage. Madame de Tourzel responded: "It was a prudential measure on their part, so as not to occupy your imagination with thoughts about marriage, which might have interfered with your application to study."
From the moment when she was made acquainted with the wishes of her father and mother, the orphan considered herself definitely affianced to the young Prince thus designated to her choice. The idea of uniting her misfortunes to those of her family and of being still useful to her country by averting the claims which her marriage to a foreign prince might give rise to, had made on her, moreover, a strong impression. Some days later, when a rumor got about to the effect that the young Princess was soon going to Vienna to marry the Archduke Charles, Madame de Mackau said to her: "If this political measure should contribute to bring Madame
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back to France, I should rejoice at it." "Ah!" replied Marie The'rdse, "I know nothing of any political measures but the last will of my parents ; I will never marry anybody but the Duke of Angou- leme."
Madame de Tourzel visited the Temple regularly. The former governess of the children of France was on sufficiently good terms with Madame de Chante- reine, but she felt, nevertheless, something of that rivalry which nearly always shows itself among those who surround princesses, even when they are exiles. "Madame de Chantereine, " she says, "did not lack intelligence, and appeared to have received some education. She knew Italian, and this had been pleasant for Madame, to whom it had been taught. She was skilful in embroidery, which was a resource for the young Princess, to whom she gave lessons in it. But, having been brought up in a little provincial town where she shone in society, she had acquired an air of self-sufficiency and such a high idea of her own merit that she thought she ought to be Madame 's mentor, and assumed a famil- iar tone which the kindliness of that Princess pre- vented her from noticing. Pauline and I tried to teach her due respect by that which we exhibited, but in vain. She had so little notion of what was becoming that she thought herself authorized to take commanding airs which made us sick to see. She was very susceptible, moreover, liked to be paid court to, and looked very unfavorably on us when
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she saw that our intercourse with her was restricted to mere politeness. Madame had become attached to her, and lavished the kindest attentions on her during a violent nervous attack she experienced one day when we were at the Temple. She seemed to be attached to Madame, and under the actual circum- stances we could not be otherwise than happy to find near her a person whom she seemed to find agree- able, and who must be admitted to have had good qualities. She left us alone with Madame during our first visits to that Princess ; but afterwards she always joined us."
All that had taken place at the Temple was highly interesting to Madame de Tourzel ; but what occu- pied her most was the fate of Louis XVII. She sometimes doubted whether the child were really dead. " Not being able to endure a loss so grievous to me," she says, "and feeling some doubts whether it were true, I wanted to make positively sure whether all hope need be given up. From my child- hood I had known Doctor Jeanroi, an old man over eighty, of singular probity, and profoundly attached to the royal family. He had been appointed to be present when the young King's body was opened, and being able to rely on the truth of his testimony as I would upon my own, I begged him to call on me. His reputation had caused him to be selected by the members of the Convention in order that his signature might strengthen the proof that the young King had not been poisoned. This worthy man
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refused at first to go to the Temple to examine the causes of death, warning them that if he found the least trace of poison he would declare it even at the risk of his life. 'You are the very man whom it is essential for us to have,' said they, 'and it is for this reason we have preferred you to any one else. ' '
Madame de Tourzel asked the old physician if he had known the young Prince well before he entered the Temple. Jeanroi replied that he had seldom seen him, and added: "The face of this child, whose features had not been changed by the shadows of death, was so beautiful and interesting that it is never out of my mind. I should recognize him per- fectly were I to see a portrait of him." Madame had a portrait which was strikingly like him. She showed it to Jeanroi, who exclaimed: "There can be no mistake about it; it is himself; no one could deny it."
The governess of the children of France looked at the different rooms of the tower with emotion, as if they were the stations of a Calvary. One day Marie The're'se offered to conduct her to the second story, where Louis XVI. and Louis XVII. had dwelt. The Princess entered there with pious re- spect, followed by Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel. The death of the young King was so recent that his governess had not sufficient courage to visit the place where he had suffered so much. But she went with the Princess into the apartments of the little tower where she had herself been imprisoned from
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August 13 to August 20, 1792. Marie The'rese said to her: "If you have the curiosity to examine the register lying on that table, you may see the report made by the Commissioners from the time we entered the Temple." Madame de Tourzel did not wait for a second invitation. She began at once to turn over the pages of the register. There she saw the reports daily addressed to the Convention concerning the royal family, and especially those relating to the illness, death, and burial of Louis XVII. "They convinced me but too well," she says, "that not the slightest hope of the young King's life could be reasonably entertained. "
Madame de Tourzel's untiring devotion found means to establish a correspondence between Marie The're'se and Louis XVIII., and to give the Prin- cess a letter from the Prince. She says: "It was the reply to a very affecting letter which Madame had written him on the day after I visited her for the first time. The King wrote in the most affec- tionately paternal tone, and she was very anxious to preserve his letter, but had no means of doing so. I risked my life whenever I burdened myself with one of these communications, and it would have been the same thing had any one discovered a letter from His Majesty in Madame 's apartments. She burned it, but with great reluctance, and I was extremely sorry to have to ask such a sacrifice." Fra^ois Hue also succeeded in conveying a letter from Louis XVIII. to the Princess, and to inform her of the
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substance of another in which Charette, in express- ing the sentiments of the Catholic and royalist army of the Vendee, protested that he and his companions in arms would shed their last drop of blood to liber- ate the august captive.
Meanwhile, public opinion was becoming more favorable to the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Pamphlets asking for her delivery were circulated, and an almanac was published at Basle in which, under a pseudonym, M. Michaud wrote as follows: "Marie The'rese is at liberty to walk in the courtyards of the Temple. The two commissioners who are continually on guard take off their hats when they approach her, and treat her with the respect inspired by the memory of what she was and the sad spectacle of what she is now. Several persons visit her every day, and she seldom dines alone. She occupies herself a good deal with a goat she has, which knows and follows her famil- iarly. One day one of the commissioners called this faithful animal to see if it would not follow him also, but, to the gentle amusement of Marie The'rese, it would not. A dog is another faithful companion to the young prisoner, and seems much attached to her."
When the Princess went down into the Temple garden, she was allowed to take drawing-materials and sketch the different aspects of that fatal yet hal- lowed tower which was at once a prison and a sanct- uary. The sympathetic concerts had begun again
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in neighboring houses. They were denounced in this fashion by a person named Leblanc: "During the past four months concerts have been given from time to time in the Rotunda of the Temple, in the garrets, on the fourth floor reached by stair- case number four. This lodging had been occupied by worthy people who were paid very high to give it up. For the last two ' decades ' 1 the concerts have been repeated much more frequently in this local- ity. Very elegant women, and men with tucked-up hair come there to contemplate Capet's daughter at their leisure ; on her part, she never fails to walk in the garden of the Temple as soon as she learns that the royalist assembly is complete. Then the partisans of the defunct court make all manner of protesta- tions of devotion and respect for her royal person. The concert place not proving large enough to con- tain all this illustrious company, they go in great numbers to a house in the rue Beaujolais, No. 12, whose windows likewise command a view of the Temple garden, and there, as in the garrets of the Rotunda, they publicly repeat the same gestures, signals, and marks of attachment to the daughter of Marie Antoinette. . . . On the 1st Vende"miaire there was a concert at about five in the afternoon, the hour at which they ordinarily commence, and the adoration and the telegraphic signs were kept up until the end of the day. Persons attached to
1 Under the Republic the days were divided into periods of ten each instead of into weeks.
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various theatres are believed to have been recog- nized there, and since the date mentioned, carriages, which were almost unknown in this quarter, roll through it frequently. Something like a hundred persons have been known to assemble at a time in the places above mentioned. They are successively and continually relieved by others."
How interesting and pathetic these improvised concerts are! Kindly emotions spread from street to street, from house to house. Passers-by stop and breathe a sigh. The people, once so furious, are returning, to better sentiments. All mothers pity the young orphan, and as they think of her fate, they say: " Great God! If such a thing should ever happen to my children ! " The prisoner descends the gloomy stairway and appears in the garden. She is sixteen years old, and slender in figure. Her features, extremely delicate in her infancy, have become beautiful. Her eyes are expressive, and her once fair hair is now of a chestnut hue. She wears it long and unpowdered. How beautiful and sym- pathetic she seems ! Her candor and ineffable grace, her gentle and melancholy smile, the premature gravity of her expression, all inspire a blended admiration and respect. If people dared, the young captive would be greeted with applause. The con- cert goes on, and the affecting ballads whose har- monious echoes arrive at her ears like a consolation, charm and soothe her sadness.
Even the aspect of the prison is less sinister.
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The sight of compassionate faces diminishes the moral sufferings of the young captive. Tears have their poesy, and the orphan finds in her regrets I know not what bitter and penetrating delight. The Temple no longer horrifies her. She clings to it as to a consecrated spot. There she seems to see the features and hear the voices of her beloved dead. Her vividly impressed imagination makes them live again. She questions them, and they answer her from beyond the tomb. And then the Temple is in France, and the daughter of kings loves her country so much ! A sort of struggle goes on in the depths of her soul. On the one hand she is impatient to rejoin her uncle Ixniis XVIII. ; on the other, it will cost her much to go far away from a place where her parents have given her such noble and affecting examples, and she sometimes asks herself if captivity is not preferable to exile.
VII
NEW SEVEEITIES
MARIE THERESE was gradually accustoming herself to her fate when new anxieties sud- denly came to plunge her into sufferings which reminded her of her most wretched days. The con- servative and royalist reaction that was beginning had inspired her with great though transitory hopes. There had been a moment when she might have thought she need not go into exile to obtain free- dom, and that the explosion of monarchical senti- ment would be great enough to bring about an immediate restoration. She was told the most cheering news: that the Convention was moribund and had neither authority nor credit ; that the popu- lace was humbled since Prairial ; 1 that the royalist agencies had begun their underhand labors ; and that the cruel executions at Quiberon had rendered the men of Thermidor as opprobrious as the partisans of Robespierre. Paris, still more irritated than the provinces against the revolutionists, was becoming the headquarters of all political and social reaction.
1 The ninth month of the French Eepublican Calendar, from May 20 to June 18.
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The energy of the Jeunesse DorSe,1 the principles of the middle classes, always inimical to the Jacobins, the polemics of the press which, since the 9th Thermidor, had relentlessly attacked the Septembrists, all contrib- uted to make the capital a centre of agitation which the royalists sought to turn to advantage. The orphan of the Temple knew that out of the forty- eight sections of which the Parisian National Guard was composed, forty-three had declared against the Convention, and implicitly against the Republic. A shower of journals, pamphlets, brochures, gave the former instruments of the Terror not a moment's respite. The Convention had just resolved that two-thirds of the new legislative body that would succeed it must necessarily be Convention is ts. This resolution produced a veritable hue and cry. The sections protested vigorously against it. With a single exception, they all opposed the decrees of the Convention, and were willing even to resort to arms against them. Marie The'rese, who was acquainted with all the details of this reactionary movement, and much impressed by the marks of sympathy peo- ple accorded her with impunity, thought it not impossible that she might go directly to the Tuileries from the Temple. She was encouraged in these blissful dreams, which were to be followed by a rude awakening.
1 The name given in 1794 to those rich young men who united in order to support the Thermidorians, the party that overthrew Robespierre.
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From the 12th Vende*miaire, Year IV. (October 4, 1795), a great tumult became evident in Paris. There were disturbances in the evening, and seri- ous events were predicted for the morrow. In the morning of the 13th Vende'miaire, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter went to the Temple and conversed with Marie The're'se concerning the hopes they entertained from the royalist movement. The day passed in comparative quiet, but towards half- past four in the afternoon explosions were heard. Gomin came to tell the Princess that they were fir- ing cannon, and that having gone up to the roof of the tower he had heard a grand fusillade. Madame de Tourzel says in her Memoirs: "It was evident, since we had heard no talk concerning this, that what was occurring was not in our favor, and Gomin cautioned us not to wait until nightfall to return home. We kept putting off our departure, being unwilling to leave Madame; but it had to come at last. She bade us adieu very sadly, for she was thinking of the sorrows that might be caused by this fatal day, and we promised to return the next day if there were the slightest possibility of doing so.
" We went home silently, and in great anxiety as to what was going on in the streets of Paris. We saw nothing alarming until we reached the Place de Greve, where there was an enormous crowd strug- gling and suffocating in the effort to escape more quickly. We asked a man who seemed less excited than the others whether we could safely cross the
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bridges to return to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He advised us to keep away from the quays, cross the Pont Notre Dame promptly, and make our way into the interior of Paris. Crossing the bridge was terrible; we could see the smoke and flame of the cannon incessantly discharged."
Each report echoed in the heart of Marie The'rese. "I am weeping over the blood shed at this moment," she said to Gomin. The men who were struck by the bombs were her friends, the royalists, but her compassion extended to both camps, the victors and vanquished alike, for all were Frenchmen. Doubt- ful about the result of the struggle, she was a prey to the keenest anxiety, and fervently asked God to put an end to the fratricidal combat which ensan- guined Paris.
Meanwhile cannons were thundering simultane- ously in the rue Saint-Honore", on the Quai du Louvre, and the Pont Royal. A man whose name was still unknown to the orphan of the Temple, but who was to exercise an immense influence on her destiny as well as on that of France and the entire world, a man who was to delay the Bourbon res- toration for more than eighteen years, was making his first appearance on the scene of politics, and signalizing his de*but as by a thunder stroke. This unknown son of a poor Corsican gentleman, had been an officer in the armies of Louis XVI. Having been a royalist, he had become a republican, and was one day to make himself Emperor. The
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Republic was saved by a future Caesar. In addition to the troops of the Convention, he had fifteen hun- dred individuals under his orders who called them- selves the patriots of 1789, and who had been recruited among the iSans-culottes, the pikemen, and the former gendarmes of Fouquier-Tinville. He hurled them upon the steps of the church of Saint- Roch to dislodge the men of the sections.
These had no artillery, and imagined that they needed none, their heads being turned by the exploits of the Vende'an peasants, who had often seized the enemy's cannon without other weapons than their cudgels. But they were soon to learn their error. Bonaparte's great argument, cannon, was to be the victor. He swept the whole length of the rue Saint- Honord, and from the upper end of the Pont Royal demolished the royalist columns advancing from the Faubourg Saint-Germain. At six in the evening the victory of the Convention was complete ; the strug- gle had lasted but an hour and a half.
Madame de Tourzel and her daughter went to the Temple the following day and gave the young Prin- cess the news she was impatiently expecting. " We could tell her of none but afflicting events," she says. " The Convention, which was in deadly fear lest the sections should march against it, completely lost its head ; any one who chose entered the Committee of Public Safety and offered his advice. Bonaparte, who had carefully examined all that was going on, who knew how disorderly were the movements of the
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sections and that terror pervaded all minds, promised the Convention to turn the affair to their advantage, providing they would leave him free to act. He had cannon brought up to the rue Saint-Honor^, and dis- persed the troops of the sections in a moment with a rain of grapeshot. This was the beginning of his fortune. Fear and stupor took the place of hope; the soldiers insulted passers-by, and every one trem- bled at the thought of the possible results of this ruthless day."
The illusions in which Marie Therese had been living for some weeks were dissipated. When she learned that the Convention had triumphed, she thought the crimes of the Terror were about to recommence. For some time longer she was per- mitted to receive Madame and Mademoiselle de Tourzel, who came on foot every morning to the Temple, unaccompanied by a servant, and did not return home until night. But this consolation was among those of which the young prisoner was speed- ily deprived. The Convention had come to the end of its stormy career. At half-past two, October 26, 1795, the President declared the last session ad- journed, adding: "Union and amity between all Frenchmen is the way to save the Republic." "What is the hour?" asked a deputy. "The hour of justice ! " replied an unknown voice. The terri- ble Assembly dispersed. October 29, the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred assem- bled, one at the Tuileries, and the other in the Hall
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of the Mandge : the five Directors afterwards installed themselves in the Luxembourg palace.
At first the new government manifested great severity toward the royalists. Lemaitre, one of their agents, was condemned, November 8, 1795, and died bravely, after refusing to make any dis- closures. Madame de Tourzel was arrested at the same time on a charge of conspiracy. She was subjected to a minute examination, and was three times kept in close confinement in a prison for twenty-four hours together. As soon as she was released she hastened to the Temple, but was informed at the door that she was henceforward forbidden to cross its threshold. Marie The're'se and Madame de Chantereine were also interrogated, but the official who conducted their examination became fully persuaded that both had remained entirely ignorant of the recent movement in Paris. Never- theless, rigorous measures were taken. The same decree which forbade Madame de Tourzel and her daughter to enter the Temple, forbade Madame de Chantereine to leave it. All intercourse between her and her family was interdicted, and she was treated like a suspected person. The concerts in the neighboring houses were not renewed. Alarmed by these changes, Marie The're'se began to dread the return of the Terror. Sometimes she thought her- self fated to execution, and sometimes to unending captivity. And yet the hour of her release was about to strike.
VIII
THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA
HTTWER since June, 1795, the question of liberat- J J ing the daughter of Louis XVI. had been seri- ously entertained. Austria had opened negotiations with the Convention having that end in view. As this power was at war with France, the business was not transacted directly between the two countries, but was managed in Switzerland, by the intermedi- ation of M. Bourcard, chief of the regency of Basel, between Baron Degelmann, Austrian Minister to Switzerland, and M. Bacher, first secretary to the French Embassy. The Cabinet of Vienna at first proposed a sum of two millions as a ransom for the young Princess, but the offer was refused. Several prisoners whose release was greatly desired by the Convention were held in custody by the Austrian government, and it proposed to exchange her against them. On 12 Messidor, Year III. (June 30, 1795), Treilhard thus expressed himself in the Convention, on behalf of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security : —
" The triumph of the French people, the hopes of all enlightened men, and the opinion of the whole 142
THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA 143
world, sanction the Republic. It would be madness to doubt its stability. The moment has arrived, then, when it is fitting to consider the daughter of the last King of the French. An imperative duty, that of the safety of the State, prescribed the seclu- sion of this family. To-day you are too strong for this rigorous measure to be indispensable. Your committees propose that an act of humanity shall be made tributary to the reparation of a great in- justice. The most foul and odious treachery has delivered a minister of the Republic and certain representatives of the people to a hostile power; and by a violation of the rights of nations, the same power has caused the arrest of citizens vested with the sacred character of ambassadors. In this ex- change, therefore, we cede a right in order to ter- minate an injustice. It behooves the Viennese gov- ernment to reflect well on these considerations ; it may choose between its attachment to the ties of blood and its desire to prolong a useless and hateful vengeance. It does not appear to us that this mat- ter need become the subject of a negotiation ; it will be sufficient that you explain yourselves, and the French generals will be charged to transmit your declaration to the generals of the Austrian army."
A decree in conformity with these sentiments was at once drawn up by the recording officer, and adopted before the close of the session. It was conceived in the following terms : " The National Convention, after listening to the report of its
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Committees of Public Safety and General Security, declares that on the very instant when the rive representatives of the people, the Minister, the French ambassadors, the principal prisoners delivered by Dumouriez to the Prince of Cobourg, the postmaster Drouet, captured on the Flemish frontiers, the am- bassadors Maret and Se'monville, arrested in Italy by the Austrians, and the persons of their suite who were either delivered up to Austria or arrested and detained by its orders, shall be set at liberty and arrive on French territory, the daughter of the last King of the French shall be handed over to the per- son delegated to receive her by the Austrian govern- ment."
There are few things so curious as this affair to be found in the history of diplomacy. The mere names of the persons to be exchanged for the orphan of the Temple give rise to a multitude of reflections. Among the prisoners surrendered by Austria figures Drouet, the postmaster of the Varennes journey, who by recognizing Louis XVI. at Sainte-Menehould and pursuing him to Varennes, had caused his arrest and thus been the cause of the downfall of royalty. It was this Drouet who, on becoming a member of the Convention, proposed in 1793 that all English persons found in France should be condemned to death, exclaiming from the tribune: "This is the time for bloodshed. What do we care for our rep- utation in Europe? Let us be brigands, since the welfare of peoples demands it." Sent as commis-
TUE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA 145
sioner of the Army of the North, he was at Mau- beuge when it was besieged by the Prince of Co- bourg. Seeing that the place was about to be taken, he essayed to make his way through the enemies' camp, but fell into their hands and was incarcerated in the fortress of Spielberg. Happily, the young Princess was not to be confronted with the prisoners against whom it was intended to exchange her. What impression would have been produced on her by the sight of Drouet, who had left so terrible a trace on her memory? The strange caprices of a period fertile in revolutions and surprises made Drouet sub-prefect of Sainte-Menehould, during the reign of Napoleon, and in 1814 he received the cross from the Emperor's hands. Under the Restoration, the law concerning regicides included his case, and he concealed himself at Macon under the name of Merger. There he led a very secluded and pious life, and it was not until his death, April 11, 1824, that it became known at Macon that Merger, whose manners had been so peaceable and edifying, was in reality Drouet the Conventionist.
Another of the prisoners was also to have a singu- lar destiny, — Beurnonville, once a Minister of the Terror, afterwards a Marquis and a Marshal of France under the Restoration. Having been ap- pointed Minister of War a few days after the murder of Louis XVI., he was sent, April 1, 1793, to the Army of the North with four commissioners of the Convention — Camus, Bancal, Quinette, and La-
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marque — to seize the person of Dumouriez, who was accused of maintaining relations with Austria. Warned of his danger in time, Dumouriez arrested the minister and the four commissioners and deliv- ered all five to the Prince of Cobourg. They were held as prisoners of Austria until exchanged for Marie The're'se. In 1796, Beurnonville became com- mander-in-chief of the Army of the North ; in 1800, ambassador to Berlin ; in 1802, ambassador to Madrid; in 1814, a member of the Provisional Gov- ernment. In full favor under the Restoration, he followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent, and was named Marshal of France in 1816, and Marquis in 1817.
The two ambassadors of the Convention, to Na- ples and to Constantinople, who had been arrested in Italy and detained in captivity by Austria, were also among those exchanged for the daughter of Louis XVI. : Maret, the future Duke of Bassano, Napoleon's Minister of Foreign Affairs ; and Se'mon- ville, the pre-eminently clever man whom Napoleon made a councillor of State, ambassador to Holland, and senator, and who was afterwards one of the favorites of the Restoration and grand referendary of the Chamber of Peers during the reign of Louis Philippe. How many revolutions are recalled by the mere names of these different personages !
But to return to the details of the negotiation. Conformably with the decree passed by the Conven- tion, June 30, 1795, General Pichegru, commander- in-chief of the Army of the Upper Rhine, com-
THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTEIA 147
municated the proposal of exchange to the Austrian general, Stein. The Emperor of Austria at first experienced an extreme repugnance to accede to it, but he ended by accepting it in principle. In a note transmitted to Pichegru by the Austrian general, Clairfayt, he said : " Since it is but too true that in the rnidst of the violent catastrophes which succeed each other in the French Revolution I ought to con- sult nothing but my tender affection for my cousin, I desire you to make known to the French general that I accede in the main to the proposition made me. But there is another proposition which I think it well to add to that contained in the document re- mitted to General Stein; its object is the mutual exchange of numerous prisoners of war about whom, notwithstanding my reiterated demands, they have stubbornly refused to concern themselves."
The negotiations at Basel were long and difficult, and terminated only under the Directory. Before their conclusion, Baron Degelmann, representing the Cabinet of Vienna, transmitted to M. Boscher, the representative of France, a note by which the Aus- trian government designated the person it desired to accompany the young Princess on her journey : " It is understood," says this note, "that so young a person must not be left, during a long journey, with- out a companion already known to her and possessing her confidence. It is likewise understood, that this companion should be acceptable at the place where she is going. The virtues of Madame de Tourzel,
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and the prudence for which she is renowned, would render her more agreeable to the Austrian court than any lady not known there. Compliant our- selves concerning the rendition of several state prisoners and those who share their detention, we may hope that they will not be less so in France with regard to a choice which suggests itself so naturally that it has been anticipated by many."
There was no longer anything in the way of the deliverance of Marie The'rdse. A decree thus worded was passed by the Directory November 27, 1795 : " The Ministers of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs are commissioned to take the necessary measures to accelerate the exchange of the last King's daughter against citizens Camus and Quinette, and other agents or deputies of the Republic, to appoint an officer of gendarmes fit and proper for such duty to accompany the daughter of the last King, and to give her as a companion that one of the persons devoted to her education who pleases her best."
Benezech, Minister of the Interior, went to the Temple the following day, to announce to the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette that her chains were at last to be broken.
IX
THE DEPARTURE FROM THE TEMPLE
WHEN Benezech, Minister of the Interior, ap- prised Marie The'rese, November 28, 1795, that she was soon to leave the Temple, the young prisoner was greatly moved. She might have experi- enced joy had permission been given her to rejoin her uncle, Louis XVIIL, but the idea of going to Vienna, where she knew not what awaited her, caused her anxiety. She thought the Emperor of Austria had not done what he should to save Marie Antoinette, and the policy of the Austrian govern- ment awoke suspicions in the daughter of the martyr- queen which the future was to justify. Whether she had a presentiment of the snares that would be laid for her in Vienna and the quasi-captivity she was to undergo there, or whether, a Frenchwoman at heart, she was saddened by the thought of living in a strange land, at all events, she received the tidings of her approaching deliverance without en- thusiasm.
There was at this period more than one latent royalist, more than one high official in government circles, who looked forward to a possible Bourbon
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Restoration. Was not Ban-as himself to intrigue one day with Louis XVIII. ? Benezech, possibly still more through kindness of heart than through inter- ested motives, secretly sympathized with the royal family. The youth, the virtues, the misfortunes, and the grace of the orphan of the Temple touched him profoundly. He showed her great respect, and asked what persons she desired to accompany her to Vienna. Without a moment's hesitation the young Princess named Madame de Tourzel, Madame de Mackau, and Madame de Se*rent, formerly lady of the bedchamber to Madame Elisabeth.
The Minister gave Marie The're'se room to hope that her choice would be ratified by the Directory without any difficulty. He added that he would attend to all the preparations for her departure, and would send her two persons through whom she could order the dresses she wished to have made. Two members of the administrative commission of police presented themselves" at the Temple the next day for that purpose. In spite of their insistence, she limited herself to pointing out such things as were strictly necessary, a small quantity of linen under- wear, some shoes, and the simplest materials. She was unwilling to receive more from the government. As they represented that on arriving at the court of Austria she would need an outfit suitable to her rank, she replied : " If they will permit me to take a few souvenirs which remind me of that rank, let them return the things which belonged to my mother
THE DEPARTURE FROM THE TEMPLE 151
and me, and which were taken away from us a few days after our arrival at the tower." These included body-linen and some gowns and laces. The seals placed on the chest of drawers in which these objects had been deposited were removed, but Marie The*- rese's wish was not granted.
Meanwhile public sympathy with the orphan of the Temple was constantly increasing. Benezech dared propose to have her travel across France in an open carriage drawn by eight horses, surrounded by persons designated by herself. The suggestion was not well received, but the very fact that it was offered to the Directory by a minister proved the reaction that had taken place. The same thing is attested by Francois Hue in these terms : —
"At this epoch certain members of the National Convention who felt, in common with a majority of the inhabitants of Paris, a keen interest in the fate of Madame Royale, whose death was desired by a few regicides, extorted a decree in her favor in accordance with which the Executive Directory passed a resolution of which M. Benezech, Minister of the Interior, gave me a copy. This minister sent me also another resolution which, in consequence of Madame's having deigned to request that I should follow her to Vienna, authorized me to accompany her, and even to remain near her, without incurring the penalties of the laws against emigration on account of this journey.
" M. Benezech had spoken to me with emotion con-
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cerning the fate of the young Princess, whom he never called by any other name than Madame Roy- ale. Seeing that I looked at him with surprise, he said : ' This new costume is simply my mask ; I am even going to reveal one of my most secret thoughts to you : France will never regain tranquillity until the day when it resumes its former government. Therefore, when you can do so without compromis- ing me, lay the offer of my services at the King's feet, and assure His Majesty that I shall be zealous in caring for the interests of his crown.' "
To sum up, the Directory showed real good will toward the daughter of Louis XVI. Nevertheless, it did not permit Madame de Tourzel to accompany her. It mistakenly supposed the former governess of the children of France to favor the idea of a marriage between the Princess and an Archduke, and that the Austrian government would make use of such a matrimonial alliance in order to advance claims on a portion of French territory. The choice of Madame de Tourzel, like that of Madame de Se*rent, was rejected, and the governess had not even the consolation of bidding adieu to her former pupil. As to Madame de Mackau, her health not permitting her, to her great regret, to accompany the young Princess, her place was taken by her daughter, Madame de Soucy. The other two persons who escorted Marie Therese were the honest and respect- ful keeper, Gomin, for whom she had nothing but praise, and M. Me*chain, an officer of gendarmes who had been highly recommended to her.
THE DEPARTURE FROM THE TEMPLE 153
December 16, 1795, Benezech, Minister of the Interior, presented himself at the Temple and an- nounced to the Princess that she was to depart on the 18th, at half-past eleven in the evening. She made her own preparations for the journey on the 17th, but not with the alacrity and pleasure that might have been expected. She selected the small quan- tity of linen and other apparel that she wished to take, and had the rest distributed to the employees of the Temple as memorials of her. Then she put on her best gown and descended into the garden, where she saluted, by way of farewell, the persons who were in the habit of making signs of sympathy and respect from the windows of neighboring houses. This adieu of the young captive, who by a smile and a grateful gesture thanks the compassionate souls who have not the happiness of speaking to or approach- ing her, but who find means to send her their good wishes and their homage by the movements of their heads and the expression of their faces, is full of a penetrating poetry worthy to inspire the brush of a great painter.
The Directory had decided that the departure of the young Princess should take place at night. It had its reasons for preventing her from passing- through the streets of the capital in broad daylight. The mere sight of her might cause a revolution — the revolution of pity. No discourse could be so eloquent as the aspect of this young girl, a living legend, the legend of innocence and virtue, of youtL
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and misfortune. Her face alone touched the heart. How much greater still would have been the gen- eral emotion could people have read the depths of her soul, could they have known all the trials re- served for this gentle victim in the future ! She had not reached the last station of her Calvary. How many exiles, how many revolutions, what sufferings of every description, the daughter of Louis XVI. was to yet undergo! Providence had decreed that the chalice of bitterness should never be taken from her lips.
The moment of departure arrives. It is the 18th of December, 1795. It is eleven o'clock at night. Minister Benezech, who has left his carriage in the riie Meslay, knocks at the Temple door. He hands to Lasne the keeper and to the civil commissioner a duplicate of the decree of the Executive Directory, followed by this declaration : " The Minister of the Interior declares that Citizens Gomin and Lasne, commissioners placed on guard at the Temple, have delivered to him Marie The'relse, daughter of the last King, in the enjoyment of perfect health; which delivery was made to-day at eleven in the evening, declaring that the said commissioners are well and duly discharged of the keeping of the said The're'se Charlotte. — Signed Benezech. — Paris, this 27th Fri- maire, Year IV. of the Republic, one and indivisible."
The Princess, with Gomin at her side, is waiting for the Minister in the Council Hall on the ground- floor of the tower. She leaves it after bidding adieu
THE DEPASTURE FROM THE TEMPLE 155
to Madame de Chantereine. Her apartment on the third floor is empty. This inscription which she had written in the antechamber with the point of a needle or a scissors may be read there : —
"Marie The"r6se Charlotte is the most unhappy person in the world. She can obtain no tidings of her mother, nor even be reunited to her, although she has asked a thousand times.
" Long live my good mother, whom I love much, and of whom I can obtain no news ! "
In her own chamber were these words which she had chalked on the wall : —
" O my father, watch over me from heaven !
" O my God ! pardon those who caused the death of my parents ! "
A few days afterward a regicide Conventionist, Rovere, visited the Temple tower and read this last inscription. He turned pale, and as he has himself recorded, remorse drove him from the apartment.
Marie The*re"se has crossed the threshold of the Temple. She takes Benezech's arm. Gomin and the Minister's valet follow her, carrying a package and a carpet-bag. A sentry is under arms, but he has his instructions, and does not budge. The sol- diers on guard also remain motionless. Their officer alone comes forward and salutes. The night is dark, the neighboring streets are empty, the approaches of the Temple silent. "I am sensible of your atten- tions and your respect," says the Princess to Bene- zech, "but even at the hour when I owe you my
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liberty, how can I refrain from thinking of those who have crossed this threshold before me? It is just three years four months and five days since these doors closed upon my family and me ; to- day I go out the last, and the most wretched of all."
At the moment when she departed thus from the fatal precincts of the Temple, Marie The're'se recalled all she had suffered there : her entry into the tower by torchlight, the adieus of Louis XVI. as he was going to the scaffold, the day when she was sepa- rated from her brother, the days when Marie Antoi- nette and Madame Elisabeth departed, and that on which she learned at the same time the death of three beings so dear to her heart. All these sinister dates renewed themselves in her mind. And yet, it was not without regret that she left the dungeon which had been the sanctuary of faith and of sorrow. Just as some persons cannot tear themselves away from a tomb above which they have prayed, so the child of martyrs was loath to leave the abode where her parents had given her such admirable examples. If she had at least had the certainty of revisiting the Temple, to kneel there and pray God for the execu- tioners of her family ! But no, that consolation was not granted her. Eighteen years later, when the unfortunate Princess returned to France, Napoleon had caused the tower to be demolished, and not a stone of it remained.
SECOND PART THE EXILE
THE JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER
IT is December 18, 1795 — 27 Frimaire, Year IV. It is half-past eleven o'clock at night. Marie The're'se of France, leaning on the arm of Benezech, Minister of the Interior, leaves the precinct of the Temple by the rue de la Corderie, opposite the tower, and walks through this street. She finds the Minis- ter's carriage at rue Meslay, and gets into it with him and Gomin the keeper. The street is empty. No one sees the daughter of kings depart. The car- riage starts and arrives at rue Bondy, behind the Opera House (the present theatre of the Porte Saint- Martin). The Princess, the Minister, and Gomin leave the carriage. Just in front of them stands the travelling berliu in which Marie The're'se is to be taken to the frontier. On the front seat of this ber- lin are Madame de Soucy, the daughter of the Baron- ess of Mackau, and Me'chain, the officer of gendarmes, who, like Gomin, is to accompany the young Princess.
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She takes leave of Benezech, thanks him, and gets into the carriage with Gomin. " Adieu, Monsieur ! " she says. Then she departs into exile. Benezech pulls out his watch. It is midnight. The 19th of December, 1795, is beginning. On this day, the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, born at Versailles December 19, 1778, enters her eigh- teenth year.
The young Princess travels incognito, under the name of Sophie. The government has instructed Me'chain, the officer of the gendarmes, to conduct to Huningue two women and a man (Marie The're'se, Madame de Soucy, and Gomin) ; one of these women is to pass for his daughter, and the other for his wife, the man for his confidential servant. His orders are to allow no one to speak with them in private. He is to occupy himself especially with the younger of the two women, designated under the name of Sophie, and to take excellent care of her health.
Marie The'rese has herself written the account of her journey. At nine in the morning, December 19, she breakfasts at Guignes. At Nogent-on-Seine she is recognized by the innkeeper's wife. She is treated with much respect. The street and courtyard are thronged with people. They are affected on seeing the daughter of Louis XVI. and load her with bene- dictions. She passes the night at Gray.
She sets out again the next morning and travels all day and all night of December 20-21. At nine in the morning, December 21, she arrives at Chaurnont
THE JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER 159
and alights for breakfast. There she is recognized, and an immense and sympathetic crowd throng the approaches of the room where she takes her repast ; when she re-enters the carriage, everybody follows her with good wishes and respectful homage. The 22d, she reaches Vesoul at eight in the evening, hav- ing accomplished only ten leagues during the day for lack of horses. She enters Belfort the 23d at eleven o'clock in the evening and sleeps there. The 24th, she departs at six in the morning, and arrives at nightfall at Huningue. There she alights at the Cor- beau tavern and is installed in the second story. The innkeeper, M. Schuldz, knows who she is, and receives her with marks of profound respect.
The Directory had given M. Fran§ois Hue permis- sion to rejoin the Princess at Huningue. After the 10th of August, this former officer of the King's bed- chamber had been called by Louis XVI. to the honor of remaining in attendance on him and the royal family. In the will made in the Temple tower, December 25, 1792, the unhappy monarch had writ- ten: "I should think I had calumniated the senti- ments of the nation if I did not openly recommend to my son Messieurs Chamilly and Hue, whose genuine attachment has led them to shut themselves up with me in this sad abode, and who have expected to be its unfortunate victims."
Fran9ois Hue, accompanied by Madame de Soucy's young son and Meunier and Baron, employees of the Temple, as well as by a chambermaid and a little dog
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belonging to Marie The're'se, had left Paris an hour after the young Princess. They reached Huriingue several hours later than she did. "My pen," he says, " can but feebly express what I felt when the daughter of Louis XVI. deigned to speak to me for the first time since my departure from the Temple. She gave me at this moment a letter she had written to the King, her uncle, ordering me to see that it reached His Majesty. This was not the only time I received the same commission, and, on one of these occasions, the confidence with which Madame hon- ored me was so great that she commanded me to read the letter with which she had entrusted me. Who would not preserve an eternal souvenir of the sentiments this Princess testified towards His Majesty when imploring his clemency in favor of the French, and even for the murderers of her family in these expressions : ' Yes, uncle, it is she whose father, mother, and aunt they have caused to perish, who on her knees begs from you their pardon and peace ' ? "
December 25, the Courbeau hotel was surrounded by a crowd the whole day long. An order to keep the door closed was issued. The Princess was re- quested not to open her windows. She wrote a let- ter to Madame de Tourzel, concerning which that lady has said : " Madame wrote me from Huningue before quitting France. I carefully treasured this letter and that I received from her from Calais, when she re-entered France, as precious monuments of her kindness and the justice she never ceased to
THE JOURNEY- TO THE FRONTIER 161
render that profound attachment I have vowed to her until my latest breath." After writing to Madame de Tourzel, the Princess made a sketch of the room she was occupying. The wife of the inn- keeper, Madame Schuldz, came up to present her two children, who offered the Princess flowers.
Meanwhile the moment when the exchange was to be made was drawing nigh. The French prisoners, among whom were Drouet, Beurnonville, Camus, Bancal, Quinette, Maret, and Se'monville, had just been brought from Fribourg to the village of Riehen, chief town of the bailiwick of the same name, belong- ing to the republic of Basel, on the left bank of the Rhine. It had been agreed that they should not be confronted with Marie Thdrdse, and that the Princess should be delivered to the Austrian government by M. Bacher, first secretary of the Embassy of the French Republic to Switzerland, in a house very near Basel, belonging to a M. Reber. The Prince of Gavre and Baron Degelmann were to receive her on behalf of the Emperor of Austria.
December 26, M. Bacher, coming from Rieheii, arrived at the Courbeau hotel, Huuingue, at about half-past four in the afternoon. There he learned that Marie There'se refused to accept the rich trous- seau which the Directory had caused to be made for her in Paris. The republican diplomat showed great respect to the daughter of Louis XVI., and wrote to his government: "I have just seen the daughter of the last King of the French ; she mani-
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fests the keenest regret at seeing herself on the point of quitting France ; the honors which await her at the court of Austria affect her less than her regrets at leaving her country." The young Princess thanked M. Bacher and took leave of the innkeeper and his family, who had treated her with affectionate respect. She left them some small mementoes, and said to Madame Schuldz, who was pregnant : " If you have a daughter, I beg you to let her bear my name." Gomin, who was soon to leave the august orphan, could not avoid weeping. To reward him for his devotion, the Princess gave him the following lines, written by herself : " In spite of my chagrin, this journey has seemed agreeable to me on account of- the presence of a kind-hearted person whose goodness has long been known to me, but who has carried it to the highest degree by the manner in which he has behaved, and the active way in which he has served me, although assuredly he could not have been accustomed to do so. It must all be attributed to his zeal. I have known him for a long time ; this last proof was not necessary in order to gain him my esteem ; but he has it more than ever in these final moments. I can say no more; my heart feels strongly all that it ought to feel, but I have no words wherewith to express it. I conclude, however, by conjuring him not to be too much afflicted and to take courage ; I do not ask him to think of me, I am sure he will do so, and I answer for as much on my own part." When giving this paper to Gomin, the
THE JOUENEY TO THE FRONTIER 168
young Princess said : "I do not know whether I shall be able to speak to you again at Basel, and I want to fulfil my promise now. Adieu ; do not weep, and above all have confidence in God." The inn- keeper threw himself at her feet and asked her bless- ing; she seemed like a saint to him. Then she entered a carriage, and departed sorrowfully from a French town. At the moment when she crossed the frontier, some one said: "Madame, France ends here." Her eyes filled with tears. "I quit France with regret," said she ; " for I shall never cease to regard it as my country." The exile had begun.
II
BASEL
AT the moment when she was delivered up to Austria, the daughter of Louis XVI. did not suspect all the intrigues with which she was already surrounded, and the snares which were to be spread for her feet. The Austrian government was not act- ing as a liberator. It wanted to make a hostage of the young Princess, an instrument of its policy and its ambitions. Louis XVIII. had much reason to complain of the Austrian court at this period. As head of the House of France, and as uncle of Marie The'rSse, he was perfectly entitled to demand that his niece should join him at Verona, in accordance with her own desire, instead of being kept at Vienna, where her presence could only be explained by the ambitious designs of Austria. As has been said, this power had the intention of marrying her to an Arch- duke and profiting by this marriage to reclaim cer- tain portions of French territory. Several weeks earlier, Louis XVIII. had sent the Count of Avaray to Switzerland to meet the young Princess, whose liberation was expected from one day to another. Having learned that she was to pass through Inns- 164
BASEL 165
pruck, M. d'Avaray repaired to that town, where he was at first well received by the Austrian authorities. But while thus allowed to hope for the complete suc- cess of his mission, a courier was despatched to Vienna to inform the Emperor that the envoy of Louis XVIII. proposed to conduct the Princess to Verona. Orders were at once transmitted to the Prince and Princess of Gavre, who had been com- missioned to receive the daughter of Louis XVI. at Basel, that no one should see the young Princess while on the road. M. d'Avaray was obliged to leave Innspruck and return to Verona. At the same time, Thugut, the Austrian Prime Minister, who was always very hostile to France, said to the Duchess of Gramont, who was impatient for Marie The'rese's arrival at Vienna, that possibly the young Princess would receive no French persons. Such were the sentiments of the government which, while ostensi- bly offering an asylum to the orphan of the Temple, was really preparing for her a new captivity compli- cated by exile.
Marie The're'se left Huningue at four o'clock in the afternoon, December 26, 1795, to proceed to Basel. She was in the same carriage as Madame de Soucy. M. Bacher, first secretary of the Embassy of the French Republic in Switzerland, Me*chain the officer of gendarmes, Frai^ois Hue, Gomin, Baron, and a lady's maid followed in another carriage. The neutrality of the Helvetic cantons, and their inter- mediate position between France and the Austrian
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dominions, naturally pointed them out as the spot where the exchange of the daughter of Louis XVI. against certain French prisoners detained by Austria should take place. It had been arranged that the delivery of the Princess to the Austrian authorities should be effected at a country house belonging to a rich merchant named Reber, close to Basel, and very near the Saint Jean gate. The Prince of Gavre and Baron Degelmann, Austrian Minister in Switzerland, had already arrived with six carriages when Marie The'rese entered the gate. The Prince of Gavre addressed her a compliment, to which she responded graciously, and then he handed to M. Bacher, secretary of the French Embassy in Switzer- land, an act thus worded: "I, the undersigned, in virtue of the orders of His Majesty the Emperor, declare that I have received from M. Bacher, the French commissioner delegated for this purpose, the Princess Marie The're'se, daughter of Louis XVI." Provided with this act, the republican diplomat repaired instantly to Riehen to deliver the French prisoners exchanged against Madame Royale without being confronted with her. M.- Hue then asked permission to speak with the Princess. "I have been commissioned," said he, "by the Minister of the Interior, to deliver to Madame on the neutral territory of Basel, two trunks containing a trousseau intended for Her Royal Highness. Does Madame wish me to open them ? " " No," replied the Prin- cess; "return them to my conductors (MM. Me*-
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chain and Gomin), begging them to thank M. Bene- zech in my name. I am sensible of his attention, but I cannot accept his offers."
Marie The"rese then bowed to Baron Degelmann, bade adieu to Me'chain and Gomin, and with Ma- dame de Soucy and the Prince of Gavre, entered an imperial carriage drawn by six horses, which, followed by five other carriages drove into Basel through the Saint Jean gate. It was about seven in the evening, and the moon was shining brightly in a clear sky. An officer of the Swiss army, Adju- tant Kolb, rode beside the carriage of the Princess. As they left Basel, he took command of a detach- ment of Swiss cavalry which was to escort them as far as the frontier. During the night Marie The'rSse arrived at Laufenburg, a town, seven leagues from Basel, where the suite appointed for her by the Em- peror was awaiting her.
Laufenburg is one of the four " forest towns " of Upper Austria. This name is given to four German towns situated on the Rhine above Basel, in the vicinity of the Black Forest: Rheinfel, Waldshut, Seckingen, and Laufenburg. In the morning, the daughter of Louis XVI. entered a church for the first time since August, 1792, and prayed God not only for her family, but for their persecutors and executioners. Having found at Laufenburg the women the Emperor had sent to attend upon her, she continued her route toward the Tyrol. On the way she passed a place where a part of Conde"s
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army were quartered for the time being. An officer of this army, the Count of Romain, has written in his Souvenirs cTun officier royaliste : " We were in our winter quarters when we learned of the happy deliverance of the daughter of Louis XVI. This Princess, whose safety had so long been the dearest object of our wishes, passed through our quarters without our being able to enjoy the happiness of seeing her. This caused much bitter feeling." How- ever, M. Berthier, an aide-de-camp of the Prince of Conde*, accidentally encountered Marie The're'se on the highroad, and notwithstanding the injunction to keep out of her sight anything that might remind her of France, the Prince of Gavre permitted this officer, who was in uniform, to approach the car- riage. The daughter of Louis XVI. transmitted through him the kindest expressions of good will to the Prince of Condd and his companions in arms. In the Tyrol she stayed two days at Innspruck, at the castle of her aunt, the Archduchess Elisabeth, and arrived at Vienna, January 9, 1796.
The young Princess had not been without anxiety during her journey. " Why do they give me no news from Verona ? " she reflected. " Why do they not let me go there to rejoin my uncle and my King? Is not my place at his side ? What does the House of Austria, so often at strife with the House of France, propose to do with me at Vienna? They treat me with great respect, they observe a princely etiquette toward me, they place imperial carriages
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with six horses at my disposal. But would I not prefer to all this idle ceremony liberty and the right to go to my uncle ? The asylum prepared for me by Austria will doubtless be a gilded prison, but it will be a prison none the less."
m
VIENNA
Emperor Francis II., born February 12, _1_ 1768, was nearly twenty-eight years old when the daughter of Louis XVI. arrived in Vienna. On March 1, 1792, he had succeeded his father, the Em- peror Leopold, son of the great Empress Maria The- resa, and brother of Queen Marie Antoinette. In 1790, he married Marie The'rese of Naples, born in 1772, the daughter of Ferdinand IV., King of the Two Sicilies, and Marie Caroline, daughter of Marie Theresa and sister of Marie Antoinette. Marie The"- r^se of France, the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, was therefore, the cousin-german not only of the Emperor Francis II., but also of the Empress Marie The'rese of Naples.
On the day of her arrival in Vienna, the young Princess was received by a high official of the Empe- ror and conducted to one of the finest apartments of the imperial palace, which had been assigned her. There she received a visit from the Emperor and Empress, who gave her a cordial welcome. After some weeks of repose and meditation she made her appearance at court. She had put on mourning, not 170
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having been allowed to do so in the Temple. The Emperor gave her an establishment like that of the archduchesses. The Prince of Gavre was appointed grand-master of the household, and the Countess of Chanclos grand-mistress. At this period the Emperor Francis II. had only two children, — the Archduchess Marie Louise, who had just passed her fourth birth- day, as she was born December 12, 1791 ; and the Prince-imperial, Archduke Ferdinand, born in 1793. The daughter of Louis XVI. became attached to the little Archduchess, who was one day to be the Em- press of the French, and during the three years she spent at Vienna she devoted much attention to this child, for whom was reserved a destiny so extraordi- nary. Marie Louise was only seven when the orphan of the Temple left Vienna, but she remembered always that she had seen the daughter of the mar- tyred King and Queen. When conversing with the plenipotentiaries of Charles X. in her little court at Parma, she recalled this souvenir which had left a profound impression on her youthful mind.
From the time when Marie The're'se arrived in Vienna she inspired an interest bordering on venera- tion in all classes of Austrian society, and especially in the refugee French royalists, by her youth so full of trials and disasters, the precocious yet majestic gravity that characterized the pleasing melancholy of her countenance, and the touching beauty to which grief had imparted a nameless sanctity. As has been said by M. Fourneron, the author of a remarkable
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Histoire g£n6rale des EmigrSs pendant la Revolution franpaise, "it was a joy which thrilled the SmigrSs, shivering in their chilly rooms. This grave and coldly beautiful young girl, who had known all gran- deur and all wretchedness, and who, the sole survivor of a once most happy family, represented the excess of human anguish, this pale Christmas rose blossomed at last amongst them."
Yet, in spite of the sympathies she aroused, Marie The*r&se experienced many difficulties and annoy- ances in Vienna. First came the removal of the Marchioness de Soucy, her travelling companion, whose society she had found agreeable, and for whom she had a great affection. The young Princess vainly expressed her desire to retain this lady, who, like her mother, the venerable Madame de Mackau, formerly assistant governess of the children of France, had always shown the profoundest devotion to the royal family. Madame de Soucy, having obtained a pri- vate audience with the Emperor, was alike unsuc- cessful in preferring this suit. "My cousin is strongly attached to your mother," said the sov- ereign; "and she has not left me in ignorance of your own devotion to her person. I am sorry to separate you, but the state of war between the two countries necessitates this measure." Perceiving that the Marchioness had a paper in her hand, he added : " Is that paper for me, Madame ? " " No, Sire," she answered, weeping ; " it is my farewell letter to the Princess." "Entrust it to me, Madame," replied
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Francis II. "I will remit it to my cousin." The rigidity of German etiquette required that it should pass through the hands of the Countess of Chanclos, Marie The're'se's grand-mistress of the household. The Princess, not being permitted to see Madame de Soucy, was obliged to content herself with writ- ing the following letter : " I have received your let- ter, Madame, through Madame de Chanclos ; I was much affected by it. I will speak to the Emperor about you : he is good ; but you know I feared that the state of war between the two nations would separate us. The same thing has happened to all the rest of the French. I beg you to console that faithful servant of my father, M. Hue ; I am sure the Emperor will not abandon him. I am sure of your courage also. I will pray for your successful jour- ney. Say everything that is kind for me to your mother. I thank you for the sacrifice you made in leaving your country and your family to follow me, and I shall never forget it. Adieu ! rely always on the affection of Marie The"re"se Charlotte."
An exception was made in the case of Francis Hue, and he was authorized to remain in Vienna, where he was considered as an £migr£. But Meunier the cook and the waiter Baron, two employees of the Temple who had made the journey with him, were sent back to France, January 20, 1796. Madame de Soucy, her son, and her lady's maid left Vienna Jan- uary 23.
The daughter of Louis XVI. was not free. After
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having been the prisoner of the French Republic, she was now that of Austria. As if it were not enough for this girl of barely seventeen to have endured the most horrible captivity in the Temple dungeon for three years and a half, she was again surrounded by snares of every description. Her pretended liber- ators were not in reality her friends. She was sequestrated in the imperial palace at Vienna as a sort of hostage, and they sought to make her re- nounce her country and her family in order to con- vert her into an instrument of Austrian intrigues and ambitions. But the august orphan did not per- mit herself to be misled by their brilliant offers. She would accept neither the coronet of an archduchess nor the diadem of a queen. The husband selected for her by her father and mother before they died was the only one to whom she was willing to yield her heart ; she preferred exile and poverty with him to a throne with any other.
This apparently frail young girl already possessed an indomitable moral force. Misfortune had given her a precocious experience which kept her on her guard against threats and flattery alike. She re- mained more than three years in Vienna without deviating from the line of conduct she had marked out for herself. Her modesty, her gentleness, and firmness commanded the respect of all. Beholding her, people felt themselves in the presence of a supe- rior nature, a veritable Christian, a young girl who .already possessed the virtues of the valiant woman
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of Scripture. The Austrian government deceived itself in supposing that by banishing Frenchmen from the Princess they could make her forget France. This heroine of duty who, like her father, her mother, and her aunt, had pardoned her persecutors and prayed for her tormentors, was all the more attached to her country because of what she had suffered there. In Austria she pined for France, where, never- theless, she had been so ill-treated and unhappy. From the depths of her heart she longed that the nation she had so much cause to complain of might prosper and be glorious, and she never mentioned it but with affectionate emotion. Never did a harsh, severe, or recriminating word pass her lips. The Gos- pel had taught the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette to forgive injuries.
An excellent work by a promising historian, M. Alfred Lebon, gives some curious information con- cerning this period in the life of Marie The'rdse. It is entitled : L* Angleterre et T Emigration frangaise. The author has had access to the correspondence of Wickharn and Lord Macartney with the British gov- ernment. Wickham was an English agent whom the Cabinet of London had sent to Switzerland, that rendezvous of intriguers, diplomatists, and conspira- tors, to arrange the preliminaries of a Bourbon res- toration which, having been accomplished under the auspices of England, would have assured that coun- try a peace conformable to its desires. Lord Mac- artney had been accredited to Louis XVIII. by the
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English government, and had arrived at Verona, August 6, 1795, a few days after the appearance of the manifesto in which the exiled Pretender notified France and Europe of his royal intentions.
In a despatch dated January 31, 1796, Lord Mac- artney thus expressed the sentiments of the French royalists of Verona in regard to Austria : " Although greatly irritated by the way in which the Prince of Conde" has been treated and the resulting disappoint- ments to the insurrection in the southwest, they seem still more exasperated by the mean policy of the court of Vienna and the manner in which it has monopolized Madame Royale, who, as they say, was smuggled away from her family by a contra- band trade with the French Republic ; for they express their firm conviction that none other of the powers in coalition could have taken any part in the transaction or known anything about it. Sir Mor- ton Eden has probably informed Your Lordships that Madame de Soucy was separated from the Princess soon after her arrival in Vienna, and that she is not permitted to have any French attendants. The Bishop of Nancy, who is now the King's chargS d'affaires in that city, has not yet been authorized to see her. Nevertheless, means were found before she left Paris to acquaint her with her uncle's sen- timents and his desire that she should avoid binding herself by any engagement, so as to be free to marry her cousin, the Duke of Angouleme. At the same time she learned that it was the Emperor's intention
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to give her to one of his brothers ; hence she is com- pletely on her guard so far as relates to the conduct she should observe at Vienna."
Louis XVIII. could not congratulate himself on the sentiments of the Austrian court. There was a long-standing rivalry between the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons which the misfortunes of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette had not obliterated. The Vienna Cabinet was presided over by a man who loved neither monarchical nor republican France. Baron Thugut, who was almost as hostile to the Emigres as to the Jacobins, considered them frivo- lous and superficial, arid sometimes arrogant, in spite of the lessons of adversity. He found fault with their boasting, their illusions and fruitless disturb- ances, and thought that a royalist restoration would in reality afford few guarantees to Austria. What he would have liked was a dismemberment of France and to see it treated like a second Poland by the Powers. It is said that this anti-French Minister thought of forcing the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette to become a party to his Machiavellian schemes. His only object in marry- ing her to an Archduke, either Charles or Joseph, was to use the marriage for the benefit of Aus- tria. It is even insinuated that he did not recoil from the idea of dispossessing Louis XVIII. and transforming the Archduke who should become the husband of Madame Royale into a candidate for the throne of France. As a Bourbon and a possible
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competitor for the rights of this future royalty, the King of Spain was sounded by the Vienna Cabinet on the subject of this combination. The Duke of Havre*, who had remained the representative of Louis XVIII. at Madrid in spite of the peace con- cluded between the French Republic and Spain, wrote to the Baron of Flachslanden, April 5, 1796 : " This is very disquieting. Do you not see a plan of dismemberment, and a movement to bring it about safely by means of a marriage which would give, if not a title, at least a pretext for reclaiming in the name of the Princess, as her inheritance, the owner- ship of the conquered or donated provinces which have not formally recognized the Salic law? Is it not even possible that they would carry their plans so far as to invest Madame with the throne of France?" Such, it seems, was the ulterior aim of Austria, and it is claimed that Thugut had secret emissaries in Parisian cafe's who drank to the health of Louis XVI.'s daughter as Queen of France and Navarre.
If this combination should not succeed, the Aus- trian Minister hoped at least for some sort of dis- memberment. The Salic law, applicable to the Kingdom of France, had not formerly been so to the Kingdom of Navarre. True, Louis XIII. had issued an edict declaring Navarre an integral part of France. But Austria, none the less, hoped to press success- fully Madame Royale's pretended rights, as sole daughter of France, over this portion of French
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territory, contenting itself, if needful, with some other piece of the same territory.
Marie The're'se, whose sole ambition was to do what was right, indignantly rejected all combinations of the sort. The more unfortunate was her family, the more was she minded to cling to it, and what pleased her most in her projected union with the Duke of AngoulSme was that it would allow her to remain a Frenchwoman.
Mgr. Lafare, Bishop of Nancy, who had replaced the Count of Saint-Priest as Louis XVIII.'s chargg d'affaires at Vienna, perceived clearly that Austria, even while pretending interest in the French 6migr£s, in nowise desired a Bourbon restoration in France. The Pretender wrote thus to the bishop : " I am revolted by M. de Thugut's duplicity. When the weak resort to deception, it is in a manner excusable ; but when the powerful do so, one hardly knows whether the horror or the contempt they excite is greatest. For my part, I feel both."
Marie The're'se was equally offended by the pro- ceedings of the Austrian court. August 31, 1797, Louis XVIII. wrote to the Count of Saint-Priest: "I think my niece does not like being at Vienna. So I am advised by the Bishop of Nancy, and, more- over, she speaks in nearly all her letters of her desire to be with me. Whether it is to be attributed to her discontent with the place where she is, or whether the really pleasing letters of my nephew have made an impression on her heart, at all events she has
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written one to him which so far as I can remember my own youth would have turned my head at twenty-two ; so much the more reason for striking the iron while it is hot."
In September, 1796, the young Duke of Angou- l£me had written to his betrothed : " The sentiments which my dearest cousin has engraven on my heart are at once my happiness and my torment. The delays which retard the hopes that incessantly occupy me, fill me with the keenest pain. It seems to me as if I were being deprived of days all of which I long to devote to your happiness." The Prince had vainly sought an authorization from the Austrian court to repair to Vienna. In spite of the pressing and repeated invitations of his betrothed, he had not even been able to go there secretly.
Mgr. Lafare wrote to Louis XVIII., August 29, 1798: "Madame The're'se is not cordial with the Empress since her arrival. It is a part of my duty, Sire, to apprise you that Madame is very decided in character, very thoughtful, and very much attached to the determinations she has thought best to take. She has settled ideas concerning several persons ; she will never like any but those of whom she has a favorable opinion." And again, on December 30, of the same year : " Madame The'rese takes a very gloomy view of everything. I have tried to lessen Madame's distrust of the future and reanimate her hopes. I communicate the favorable details I receive from France, and these communications light up,
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momentarily at least, the sombre tints of her hor- izon."
As M. Fourneron very acutely remarks, " this mel- ancholy indicates a surer judgment and a more cor- rect appreciation of things on the part of the young girl than on that of the bishop and the majority of the SmigrSs. Nor did her good sense deceive her as to the estimate to be placed on persons."
Louis XVIII. continued to complain of Austria. The Countess of Artois having asked to be allowed to spend a few days with Marie The're'se, and having been refused, the Pretender wrote to the Count of Saint- Priest : " The response of Vienna to my sister-in-law's request to pay a short visit to her niece, her future daughter-in-law, is utterly barbarous."
It was useless for Louis XVIII. to demand his niece. And as the Bishop of Nancy, his chargS d'affaires at Vienna, was also unsuccessful in his efforts, he sent the Count of Saint-Priest back to that city, and on June 2, 1798, gave him the following instructions, the Count being still in Russia : " The marriage of my nephew, the Duke of Angouleme, with Madame The*rese, my niece, has always been one of my fond- est desires : but until now I have not been able to accomplish this union, not because the court of Vienna formally opposes it, but because I have had no settled abode. The Emperor Paul has removed this obstacle by giving me an asylum at Mittau. However, his further support is very necessary for me, because, although I have just said that the court
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of Vienna does not formally oppose the marriage, still, I am not certain that they would deliver up my niece upon my unsupported demand. I therefore commission M. de Saint-Priest to influence the sensi- tive heart of His Imperial Majesty in favor of so touching a union, and to induce him to make the affair his own. Then I should have no further trouble from Vienna, and should feel certain that the Emperor Francis would raise no more difficulties." Louis XVIII. was obliged, therefore, to implore the Czar's intervention to put an end to the ill-will and the refusals of the Austrian Emperor. Through mere pertinacity he ended by obtaining the deliverance of the young Princess, thanks to the pressing instances of M. de Saint-Priest. She quitted Vienna, May 3, 1799, taking with her no kindly souvenirs of the forced hospitality she had received there since Janu- ary 9, 1796, and went to rejoin her uncle, Louis XVIII., at Mittau.
IV
LOUIS XVIII
MARIE; THERESE of France was about to be- come the household guest of her uncle, Louis XVIII., and to live in the society of the SmigrSs. Before relating the story of the arrival of the young Princess at Courland, we shall say a few words con- cerning the Pretender and the emigration.
On the death of the young Louis XVII., the Count of Provence, the brother of Louis XVI. and of the Count of Artois (the future Charles X.), had taken the title of King and the name of Louis XVIII. Born at Versailles, October 17, 1755, his father was the grand-dauphin, the son of Louis XV., and his mother was Marie Josephine of Saxony. He married Marie Josephine Louise of Savoy, daughter of Victor Amadeus III., King of Sardinia, May 14, 1771, and never had a child. In the last years of the old regime he passed for a wit, was very proud of his erudition, a great lover of Latin poetry, quoting Horace at every turn, loving power as much as the King, his brother, disliked it, clever, calculating every step and every word, a diplomatic prince, on good terms with the philosophers, a courtier of public opinion, boast-
183
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ing of his precocious experience, and believing him- self destined to play a great part.
His wife, who was rather insignificant in appear- ance but did not lack intelligence, had no influence at court. From 1780, one of her maids of honor, a certain Countess of Balbi, became the favorite of the Count of Provence, but without giving real cause for scandal. This lady, the daughter of one Caumont- Laforce and a Mademoiselle Galard, of Beam, was the wife of the Count of Balbi, a noble Genoese, colo- nel of the Bourbon regiment and the possessor of a large fortune. She was more intellectual than beau- tiful, but being ambitious and intriguing, her glowing eyes, her extreme cleverness, her maliciously brilliant conversation, and her inexhaustible gaiety long enabled her to exercise considerable influence over the Count of Provence.
The Prince had remained with the royal family until June 20, 1791, the day when they left the Tuileries to begin the fatal journey to Varennes. He quitted the Luxembourg palace at the same time, having been ordered by his brother to rejoin him at Montme'dy, by way of Longwy and the Low Coun- tries. But, more prudent than Louis XVI., whose mistake had been to awaken suspicion by taking too many persons with him, he not merely observed the precaution of not travelling in the same carriage with his wife, but did not even go by the same road. Having no companion but the Count of Avaray, whom he afterwards considered as his preserver and
LOUIS XVIII 185
who became his favorite, he was not recognized during his flight; and while his brother's journey resulted so disastrously, his own was a complete success.
The Count of Provence went to Germany in the early days of the emigration, and installed himself very near Coblentz in a castle placed at his disposal by his maternal uncle, the Elector of Treves, Clement Wenceslas of Saxony. There he entered into rela- tions with the Prince of Conde' and organized a mili- tant policy. There, also, he quarrelled with the Countess of Balbi, who committed imprudences in which Archambaud of Pe'rigord, brother of the future Prince Talleyrand, was concerned. If one may believe what the Duchess of Abrant£s says about it in her Memoirs, the Count of Provence wrote at this time to his favorite : " Caesar's wife should not even be suspected," and she maliciously replied: "You are not Caesar, and you know very well that I have never been your wife."
The Count of Provence afterwards sought shelter from the King of Prussia, who permitted him to occupy the castle of Hamm, a little town on the Lippe, in Westphalia, near Diisseldorff. There he heard of the death of Louis XVI., declared himself Regent of France, and formed a ministry. Before the close of 1793, he left Westphalia to rejoin the Countess of Artois at Turin, where she had taken refuge near her father, Victor Amadeus III., King of Sardinia. But as this Prince did not care about
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keeping so compromising a guest at court, he was obliged to accept the asylum offered him at Verona by the Republic of Venice. There he established himself in the character of a nobleman inscribed on the golden book of the Republic and was well received. There, too, he was apprised of the death of Louis XVII., and from that time was recognized as the King of France and Navarre by all the SmigrSs, and never called by any name but Louis XVIII.
Lord Macartney, who had been sent to Verona by the British government, wrote to Lord Granville, September 27, 1795 : " The King is certainly intelli- gent ; his information is extensive and varied, and he has an easy manner of using and imparting it. Nor does he lack judgment when he is not influenced by the prejudices of his education ; his very prejudices have been considerably lessened and modified by mis- fortune and reflection. Adversity seems to have had a useful effect upon his mind ; it has ameliorated without exasperating it. He is believed to be sincere in his faith ; he certainly performs his religious duties attentively. He never fails to hear Mass, . nor to observe the holy days of his Church, and he does not eat meat on Fridays and Saturdays. They say he has never been inclined to practical gallantry, and that his attachment for Madame de Balbi was simply a tie formed by a long friendship without there hav- ing been the smallest link of a more electric nature between him and her. He is susceptible of private friendships and can be faithful to them. This side of
LOUIS XVIII 187
his character is strongly defined by his unvarying sentiments toward the Count of Avaray and the attendants who accompanied him in his flight, and have never left him since. People have different opinions concerning their merits, but he alone can judge of them."
The wife, of the Pretender had remained at Turin with her father, the King of Sardinia. She received a kindly letter from her husband every week, but did not seem anxious to rejoin him. In reality, there was but indifferent sympathy between the pair. Lord Macartney wrote to Lord Granville : " The King writes regularly once a week to the Queen ; but what seems rather singular to me, is that I have never heard her name pronounced, either by him or any person belonging to his suite. She is still at Turin and very well maintained by her father. She lives a very secluded life, and sees hardly any one except a Madame de Courbillon, who has been her lady's-maid, and who, like almost all favorites, is generally de- tested by those not in the same situation or who have not the same qualities to recommend them."
The principal counsellors surrounding Louis XVIII. at Verona were the Count of Avaray, Mgr. Conzie*, Bishop of Arras, the Count of Jau- court, the Marquis of Hautefort, the Count of Cosse*, the Chevalier of Montagnac, and the Count of Damas. "They are certainly not well situated," writes Lord Macartney ; " the Prince's dwelling, the Orto del Gazzola, is shabby ; the furniture is scanty,
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the domestics few, and the liveries threadbare. The meals, a detail so important to Frenchmen, are wretched."
Louis XVIII. was at Verona when Marie The're'se came out of the Temple. But he was not to remain there long. Alarmed by the French Republic, the Republic of Venice sent the podesta of Verona to the Pretender's house to notify him to depart from their territory. " I will go," replied the Prince, " but I make two conditions : the first is that they bring me the golden book in which my family is inscribed, so that I may erase the name from it with my own hand ; the second, that they give me back the armor which my ancestor, Henri IV., presented to the Republic."
Expelled in this manner from Verona, Louis XVIII. departed April 20, 1796, and went to Rie- gel, near the Prince of Conde", whose army received him with enthusiasm. But Austria, always ill-dis- posed toward the Pretender, would not allow him to remain in this encampment. Baron Thugut apprised him that he would be expelled by force if necessary. The unhappy exile set out again, July 14, 1796. He knew not where to find a refuge. On the fifth day of his journey, July 19, he stopped in the evening at an inn in the little town of Dil- lingen, belonging to the Elector of Treves. The heat was stifling. ' He went to the window for air. A shot was heard; a ball grazed his forehead, wounded him, and flattened itself out against the
LOUIS XVIII 189
wall of the room. On seeing the wound, the Count of Avaray exclaimed: "Ah! Sire, a hair's-breadth lower! ..." "Well," replied Louis XVIII., "the King of France would have been called Charles X." After having been confined to his bed for a week, the Pretender resumed his route, but he was not completely restored until two months later. The SmigrSs suspected' that this attempt was the work of the Jacobins, but the general belief was that the Germans, tired of the influx of Smigrts, had sought to frighten them in this manner, and that the assassin was probably one of those peasants who slaughtered the volunteers of Conde"s army whenever they found them defenceless. The heir of so many kings knew not where to rest his head. He was everywhere treated like an outlaw. The Princes of Saxony being his near relatives, since his mother was a Saxon princess, he had sent the Baron of Flachslanden to Dresden to ask for hospitality. The Elector of Saxony regretted that existing circum- stances made it impossible for him to show that cordiality which his sentiments dictated toward the King. The Prince of Anhalt-Dessau made the same response. With equal unsuccess Louis XVIII. sought a temporary asylum in the principalities of Olden- berg, Gevern, and Anhalt-Zerbst. Repulsed on all sides, he at last came to the Duke of Brunswick and entreated that he might be permitted to remain in his dominions until the return of a courier whom he had despatched to Russia. In the Duchy of Bruns-
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wick he stayed in the little town of Blankenburg, three leagues from Halberstadt, lodging with a brewer's widow from whom he hired three rooms. One of these served as salon and dining-room, the second as a bedroom, and the third was transformed into a chapel and at the same time a bedroom for the gentleman-in-waiting, who was by turns the Duke of Guiche, the Duke of Gram out, and the Count of Avaray. The Dukes of Villequier, Fleury, and Cosse*-Brissac, lodged where they could in the town. They dared not introduce a greater number of Frenchmen. The Count of Avaray wrote to the Count of Antraigues : " The Duke of Brunswick very good-naturedly ignores the King's presence in his States ; but a wise circumspection forbids that the £migr€s of the vicinity be received." For all that, Louis XVIII. maintained a little court in the brewer's incommodious house. The women were received by Madame de Marsan and his niece the Princess Charles de Rohan.
As for the Queen, she continued to live apart from her husband. After having lost the asylum she had had with her father at Turin, and vainly sought another with the Elector of Treves, she had been received as if by charity in the bishopric of Passau, a small imperial state which formed part of the Circle of Bavaria. The bishop's chancellor accorded the permission only on condition that " the worthy lady and her suite shall never become charge- able on the exchequer of His Lordship the Bishop or his subjects."
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Louis XVIII. was still at Blankenburg when he heard of the coup d1 £tat of the 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1799), which deferred his hopes of a restoration. " It is a misfortune for France and for many honest people," he wrote to the Count of Saint-Priest, September 14, " but I know your soul, and I am sure that it will not be more cast down than mine is." The treaty of Campo Formio (Octo- ber 17, 1797) had so strengthened the Directory that in all continental Europe no one dared to shel- ter the heir of Louis XIV. any longer. The Ger- mans blamed the Duke of Brunswick for receiving £migr£8, and the King of Prussia notified him to banish Louis XVIII. without delay. In vain did the unhappy Pretender write to Berlin to obtain some slight consideration, and ask not to be obliged to set out in the depth of winter without knowing where to find even a momentary refuge. Berlin responded by an order to depart at once. The Duke of Brunswick was forced to intervene in order to obtain a respite of eight days for the royal prescript. Louis XVIII. left Blankenburg in the middle of Feb- ruary, 1798. The new Emperor of Russia, Paul I., having at last consented to receive him in his do- minions, he went to Courland and from thence to Mittau.
THE EMIGRES
"NTIL 1814, the daughter of Louis XVI. was to know no Frenchman except £migr€s. It must be owned, their society was not of a sort to inspire her with agreeable reflections. The mere sight of them was enough to recall a whole series of faults and misfortunes for which they were partly responsible. The young Princess blamed them for having long compounded with the philosophic ene- mies of religion, and thought that the blows aimed at the altar had been one of the chief causes of the downfall of the throne. She had often heard her father and mother complain of the emigration. Doubtless, while the Terror lasted, for an aristocrat to remain in France was virtually to condemn him- self to death. But in 1789, before the October Days, a struggle against the adversaries of the monarchy was still possible. The real field of battle had been at Paris, not at Brussels or Coblentz. This thought has been expressed in his Souvenirs by an £migr£, the Count of Puymaigre : " I could defend the emi- gration," he says, "when it was the only means of escaping from death and thus became a necessity;
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THE EMIGEES 193
but there is no doubt that spontaneous emigration as a political system was a great blunder, and that it made an excellent cause unpopular by apparently associating it with the grasping and malevolent pretensions of our ancient enemies."
As the Count of Fersen mentions in his journal, Marie Antoinette had said: "We lament the num- ber of the emigrants ; it is frightful to see the way in which all these honest people are and have been deceived." Marie The're'se recollected that when her Aunt Elisabeth was entreated to leave France she had exclaimed : " To go away would be cruel as well as stupid." Another 6migr6, the Count of Contades, remarks in his curious Souvenirs sur Coblentz et Quiberon : " Towards the close of 1791, opinion had become so adverse to the Revo- lution that it was no longer permissible to remain in France, even with the purest intentions and the desire and ability to be of service. Those who for various reasons had been obliged to leave their places, and who felt that they were lost if their example was not followed, taxed with cowardice and devoted to infamy those who, more constant, and possibly more courageous, desired to remain and perish at their post rather than go begging in foreign lands for the assistance they thought they should be able to render themselves. From the beginning of the Revo- lution many colonels abandoned their regiments and hastened to enrol under the banners of the Prince of Conde'. I have always condemned this conduct as one
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cause of our misfortunes. Could one compare the usefulness of an armed commander esteemed by his men, combating the Revolution by arresting its progress and incessantly recalling his misled soldiers to honor and duty, with that of an individual who had become a private soldier with no resources but those strictly personal ? "
But passion does not reason. A fatal current im- pelled the old society to suicide. To those who hesitated before leaving their country, perhaps for- ever, the women sent distaffs, dolls, and nightcaps. Moreover, they thought that nothing more serious than a trip to the banks of the Rhine was in question. In five or six weeks they expected to come back in triumph; all that was necessary would be to show one's feather, a white handkerchief, the Prince of Condd's boot, and six francs' worth of cord to hang the Revolutionary leaders with. The chief protector of the £migr£s, Gustavus III. of Sweden, wrote at Aix-la-Chapelle, June 16, 1791 : " All of these exiles are animated with the same hatred against the National Assembly, and also with an exaggeration on all subjects of which you have no idea. It is really curious to see and hear them." But let us allow an £migr£ officer in Conde"s army, the Count of Contades, to speak : " Two or three thousand gen- tlemen honestly believed themselves able to bring about a counter-revolution. The Prince of Conde* perfectly comprehended the folly of this chimerical dream, but nevertheless, he wanted to prolong it.
THE EMIGRES 195
The emigres used to meet at a cafe* in Coblentz, called the Trois Colonnes, and laugh and chatter with the same lightness and frivolity as if they had been in the salons of Paris or Versailles. They spent their whole time in card-playing, slandering the Princes, and grooming their horses in their quar- ters." Another officer of Condi's army, the Count of Puymaigre, writes : " A strange spectacle was presented by this gathering of emigres, former offi- cers and magistrates now in the ranks, who shoul- dered their guns and groomed their horses. The noble corps contained, however, many bourgeois (if I may be pardoned the expression of the time) who had joined our cause either through conviction or vanity, many old and many young men, children almost, and in this strange medley a point of honor, exaggerated in certain circumstances, but which was more powerful than the rules of discipline, covered any man with disgrace who failed to be present at gun-fire. The manners were those of the reign of Louis XV.
" In spite of the principles which had caused us to leave France, nothing could be more licentious than Conde"s army ; we were dissolute, but never sceptical in matters of religion; the lewdest young fellow, receiving a mortal wound, would not dispense with the assistance of a priest, and yet, at the same time, our favorite reading was the philosophical works then in vogue. The minor poets of the day enlivened our night-watches. Boufflers was most popular with us.
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. . . Our hosts could not understand how men, exiled from their country for the sake of God and their King, could come to corrupt foreign lands; nor how the same men who never ceased preaching re- spect for property, could infringe the laws, and ruin parks reserved for the pleasure of princes and great German proprietors, in order to gratify their passion for hunting ; in a word, how they could treat the most serious matters with a levity of which the Revo- lution should have cured them. These were merited reproaches ; but in other respects our detractors were obliged to do us justice, and we became the objects of their admiration."
And then the 6migr6, with renewed esprit de corps, exclaims: "Who except ourselves could have pre- served this gaiety which supported us in our adver- sities and which blended into one the old man and the adolescent youth; this chivalrous idea which united them in the same sentiment of duty and of honor. . . . Was not this levity of which we were accused the sister of our brilliant qualities ? "
How many times the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette had heard her parents talk of this heroic but useless emigration ; of Coblentz, so mad and vicious, yet so witty and charming, which did such harm to the monarchy, though with the best intentions ; of these vain and censorious gentlemen, who had the wit to laugh at their ill fortune, but not the wisdom to learn a lesson from it! She knew the sentiments of the unhappy Queen, who said to
THE EMIGRES 197
Francis Hue : " The assistance of foreigners is one of those measures which a wise king never employs except at the last extremity," and who never looked to the other bank of the Rhine except in her de- spondent hours. She knew — for Marie Antoinette had often told her so — that if these Emigres had ex- pended at home half the energy and the efforts which they lavished uselessly abroad, the throne might have been saved.
Their illusions were dispelled very promptly. The emigration which, when it began, was con- sidered as a mere pleasure party, a brief, delightful trip undertaken for enjoyment, turned out a dole- ful and lamentable exodus whose end no one could foresee. The €migr£ who bore arms under Condd's standards had at least the usual distractions of camp life and could support himself on the pay he re- ceived from Austria. But the decay and poverty of the £migr£ in civil life were sad enough. M. Fourneron makes a striking sketch of them : " The frivolous Frenchman who received funds from his family never thought that every one of his relatives risked his head for each penny sent; he lived an idle life and had a horror of work ; he grew weary of his room; he would not deign to learn German; he rose late and went to seek some friend as silly as himself to breakfast with him at the French res- taurant ; he paid visits and showed himself importu- nate and bored. Out of money, with shabby coat and torn linen, all beheld their compatriots succumbing
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to poverty in the midst of strangers whose language they did not understand and who regarded them with suspicion. The past was heartrending and the future gloomy." The single resource of nearly all the 6migr6$, was the sale of the trifling objects they had been able to carry with them on leaving France, but this had been speedily exhausted, and they were obliged to work for their living. From 1794, their destitution was complete. On July 8, the Count of Se"rent wrote to the Count of Antraigues : " The Count of Provence has constantly before his eyes the spec- tacle of our wretched tmigrSs, fleeing from the differ- ent retreats where they have been lodged and fed on credit, and wandering along the roads coatless and shirtless. To lack even the smallest means of providing for them is the most painful of situa- tions." This poverty had increased frightfully in the years that followed. It must be admitted that if the French nobility had committed great faults they were punished for them in a terrible manner. Their bitterest enemies were obliged to pity them.
The great ladies who, when the emigration began, kept up the grand manners of Versailles on the bor- ders of the Rhine, thinking they were about to re- turn there after a few days ; those proud and witty beauties, thinking of nothing but gaming and in- trigue, who at the court of the Princes had thought they were acquiring influence in exile, lived now on alms or by manual labor. They had sold their last jewels, their last laces. Driven out of Germany, a
THE EMIGRES 199
great many of them took refuge in Hamburg which offers an epitome of the life of the French emigres throughout the world. Some gave lessons, others kept shops or practised some trade. But, when night came, they met together and, seeking to forget their wretchedness, they said to each other : " I have been a shopkeeper all day ; now I will be a lady for awhile."
Marie The'rese was profoundly saddened by all she knew of the £migr£s. Noble and generous herself, she was inconsolable at being unable to relieve such miseries ; and the decay, the poverty, the humilia- tions and anguish of these unhappy nobles whom she had seen so brilliant and so haughty at Versailles in her childhood, incessantly caused her painful reflec- tions. At every instant her heart bled. One day she heard of the Quiberon disaster and the odious massacre of prisoners ; on another, of the catastro- phes in Vende'e and the execution of Charette. Again it was the proscriptions of which the royalists were victims after the 18th Fructidor, the fusillades in the plain of Grenelle, the deportations in iron cages, the exiles to Cayenne, which was called the dull guillotine. All the families in which the daughter of Louis XVI. felt any interest were attainted. The wind of misfortune blew from all the cardinal points at once, and the French aristo- crats, tossed from one tempest to another, were hounded by an implacable fatality from every shore. All that was occurring overwhelmed with grief a
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patriotic Princess, for whom, as a poet has said, it was an inexpressible vexation to ascend and descend the staircase of another. She was astonished at the levity of the £migr€s when she saw them amuse themselves and smile. She sympathized less with them than with the loyal and heroic peasants of Vendee, who had waged what Napoleon called a war of giants, and to whom the Restoration showed itself so ungrateful later on.
At the time when she rejoined Louis XVIII. at Mittau, Marie The'rSse was fully acquainted with all the intrigues, rivalries, jealousies, and rancors that spring up around an empty phantom of royalty. Even in exile princes have their courtiers and flat- terers, and the petty annoyances of court life beset them in an inn as well as in a palace. The favors they may possibly dispense some day are quarrelled over with premature avidity. Promises are extorted from them. Their accession is discounted. From her childhood the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette had learned by experience what to think of courtiers. She knew all about the egotism, the inconstancy, and the greediness of many of them. No woman knew how to distinguish wheat from tares better than this young girl. With a perspi- cacity rare at her age she saw what was sincere and what false in the devotion protested for her. She could read the faces of her interlocutors, penetrate their thoughts, and recognize instantly those who were worthy of her esteem. She had none of that
THE EMIGRES 201
commonplace amiability which pretends to accept the world's counterfeit coin as current money. She had reflected much since 1789. Not one of the severe lessons given her by Providence had been fruitless. She had learned to know the human heart at the Tuileries, the Temple, and Vienna. Brought up in the school of misfortunes, she par- doned, but she did not forget.
VI
MITTAU
LOUIS XVIII. arrived at Mittau, March 23, 1798. He received a royal hospitality from the Emperor of Russia, Paul I., who not only sup- plied him with a palace, but with very considerable subsidies. How was it that the heir of Louis XVI. became the guest and debtor of the heir of Peter the Great, and through what strange and unforeseen circumstances did the former court of Versailles, which had been cast off by all Europe, find refuge in Russia? What politician or prophet could have predicted such events ?
Catherine the Great, the mother of the Czar Paul I., had taken an interest in the French SmigrSs. Directly after the death of Louis XVI., the Count of Artois, who was one day to style himself Charles X., had sought the aid of the powerful Empress. He arrived unexpectedly at Saint Petersburg in the month of May, 1793. The Czarina lavished honors and entertainments on the then attractive young Prince. She gave him a sword with a diamond hilt which she caused to be blessed at the cathedral, and on which were engraven the words : " Through God,
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MITTAU 203
through the King." She pushed the niceties of hos- pitality so far as to furnish the brother of Louis XVI. with the jewels he was obliged to distribute to the Russian courtiers. Proud of being greeted like a Henry IV. by the Russian court, the Count of Artois conversed about nothing but battles.
The upper circles of Saint Petersburg society were at this time very enthusiastic for the French emigra- tion. On this head we will cite a remarkable page from M. Albert Sorel's fine work, VEurope et la Revolution f ran faise: "Joseph de Maistre said to the Russians: 'Nothing is constant with you except inconstancy.' The caprice which had brought the philosophers into vogue, passed over to the &miyr£s without effort or transition. What they had so greatly delighted in before the Revolution was the old French society, so liberal minded, so subtly civilized, so noble in its sentiments and aspirations. It appeared to them in 1793 that this was better represented by a Duke of Richelieu than by a Robes- pierre. The subsequent change on their part is not in reality so strange as it seems. They had prided themselves on their philosophy as distinguishing them from others, through a spirit of caste, and the search for elegance. No sooner did philosophy become revolutionary, the Revolution democratic, and France the people, than they included in the same hatred, and condemned with the same arro- gance, philosophy, the Revolution, and France itself."
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M. Sorel also makes the following just observa- tion on the change effected in the mind of Catherine the Great: "People cannot understand how it was that this Semiramis of the eighteenth century showed herself from the very first so disparaging and ruthless towards a revolution which, at least when it began, was the practical working out of the ideas of those whom the Empress openly proclaimed to be her friends and masters. They are surprised at seeing her preach the crusade of kings with an unheard-of vehemence of sarcasm, and raising against the Revolution that terrible war-cry of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, 'Crush the wretch!' which but lately led the whole army of philosophers to the assault. They are astonished, in a word, that, sus- taining in Poland what she antagonized in France, she displayed the same ferocity in maintaining anarchy in Warsaw as she did in re-establishing the monarchy in France. They have concluded that she did not act from principle, which is very true, and that her designs lacked consecutiveness, which is a great mistake. Principles have nothing to do with this affair. Catherine did not trouble herself about them in the least. The Revolution in France disarranged her plans, and she detested it ; anarchy in Poland agreed with them, and she fomented it. She passed formidable sentences against the French rebels, but she left the care of executing them to the Germans. She was at no pains to withdraw a single one of her soldiers from the roads of Russia. The
MTTTAU 205
sentiments of her people and the remoteness of her dominions protected her from propagandism."
Moreover, Catherine II. had but slender sympathy with Louis XVIII. She accused him of indecision and hypocrisy. She would have been unwilling to give him a refuge in her Empire. But she died suddenly, November 18, 1796, and her son, Paul I., who succeeded her, was enthusiastic for the French emigration and the Pretender.
The new Czar, who had had hallucinations in his youth, had long been considered a dangerous maniac by the foreign ambassadors. In 1791, the French agent, Genet, wrote concerning Catherine's son: "He will be the most irritable of tyrants. He follows the steps of his wretched father in all things, and unless the heart of the Grand Duchess, his wife, is the temple of all the virtues, he will some day experience the same fate; he expects it, he tells her so himself, he overwhelms her with vexations ... he is gloomy, savage, suspicious; he places confidence in nobody whatever."
An harassed nature, a soul of fire, a mind disturbed by horrible catastrophes, sometimes kind hearted in spite of his errors and his violence, a blending of the tyrant and the chevalier, the Czar Paul, a sort of crowned Hamlet, the son ,of an assassinated father, and himself destined to assassination, was a strange and deadly personage, but one whose fantastic caprices become intelligible when the moral tortures inflicted on him by his memories and his presenti-
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ments are taken into account. An imaginative man, he was versatile but sincere and convinced in his enthusiasms so long as he experienced them. He was infatuated with Louis XVIII. and with Bonaparte by turns. For that matter, when AVC have so often changed our own enthusiasms, is it astonishing that a foreigner should experience a variety of impressions concerning French affairs which is shared by Frenchmen. themselves?
In 1798, Paul I. was in perfectly good faith when he took Condi's army into his pay and offered mag- nificent hospitality to Louis XVIII. He recalled, and not without emotion, the welcome he had received at Versailles from Louis XVI. in 1782, when he was travelling under the name of the Count du Nord. At that time the royal star of France, like a setting sun, was still illumining the horizon with its splendid lustre, and the court of Versailles took a sort of coquettish pleasure in displaying all its brilliancy to the Russian Prince. Never had a more dazzling ball been given in the Gallery of the Mirrors. Never had the Little Trianon exhibited more elegance and charm. The Prince of Conde", rivalling the King himself in point of luxury, gave an astonishingly magnificent entertainment to the son of Catherine the Great; Chantilly equalled, if it did not surpass, Versailles; and the Parisians exclaimed: "The King has received the Count du Nord like a friend, the Duke of Orleans like a bourgeois, and the Prince of Conde" like a sovereign."
MITTAU 207
What tragedies had occurred since then! Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and Madame Elisabeth had been beheaded, the two brothers of Louis XVI. proscribed, and the young Marie The'rese of France, the charming child who had so fascinated the Rus- sian Prince at Versailles, was now the orphan of the Temple !
At the close of 1797, the Prince of Comic*, the splendid proprietor of that marvellous chateau of Chantilly which remained like a dream of fairyland in the memory of Paul I., was an outlaw whose army, which had been alternately in the pay of Aus- tria and England, no longer found any Power will- ing to support it. It was then the Czar conceived the notion of taking it into his service. He sent one of his aides-de-camp, Prince Gortchakoff, to Uberlin- gen, on Lake Constance, where the Prince of Conde* had established his headquarters, and his proposal was heartily welcomed. Condi's army at once took up its march toward Russia. One of its officers, the Count of Puymaigre, has written in his curious Souvenirs: "We did not reach the shores of the Bug, the boundary of the Russian Empire, until some time in the month of January, 1798. I remember that it was a foggy and very cold day when we crossed the frontier. There, to our regret, we left off our white cockades, the symbol and goal of all our efforts, to assume the Muscovite insignia. A pope, or Russian priest, who was in a miserable cabin on the bank of the river, made us swear on a
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Greek Gospel, our oaths of fidelity to our new sov- ereign, the Czar. The €miyr6s, transformed into Russians as a result of so many strange events, pre- sented a singular spectacle. . . . Those among us who, on account of their rank or social habits thought it their duty or pleasure to visit the Polish nobility were, from the time of our arrival, perfectly well received. . . . The women especially showed themselves so enthusiastic that they provided us with fashionable clothes. But this fervor did not last long, or was at least restrained within narrow limits. So many indiscretions, impertinences rather, it must needs be said, were committed by our young men that many doors were closed against us. The same thing had happened in Germany."
As one sees, Conde"s officer does not spare his comrades overmuch. "The Czar," he adds, "pro- scribed philosophic works, and yet in spite of the most formal ukases, I have nowhere seen Voltaire, Rousseau, Raynal, and othep of that crew more widely diffused or in greater credit than in Poland. They formed the favorite reading of both married and unmarried ladies, who took pains to lend their works while recommending us to keep them secret. I have already said that, notwithstanding the pur- pose of our emigration, liberal ideas found their way into our ranks as well as elsewhere. ... A ukase, or imperial decree, forbade waltzing in any part of the Empire, because the Empress had contracted an inflammation of the lungs by waltzing too much.
MITTAU 209
This accident, therefore, was to change the cus- toms of all the populations between Germany and the great wall of China! I thought this a trifle arbitrary, but we evaded it by waltzing with closed doors ... as if we were conspirators. . . . An officer of Condi's army who bore the fine name of Beaumanoir was sent to Siberia on account of an intercepted letter he had written to one of his friends at Constance, in which he declaimed against serf- dom and despotism. The same man had nearly lost his life in France and been obliged to emigrate because he had published his opinions on the abuse of liberty. This was mocking at misfortune."
Louis XVIII. was to expiate dearly the hospital- ity offered him by the Emperor Paul I. At first its character was not simply courteous, but magnificent. On March 23, 1798, the Pretender with his nephew, the young Duke of Angoule*me, made a formal entry into Mittau. The different guilds of artisans came to meet him, and the former palace of the Dukes of Courland, which he was to occupy, was manned by as many guards as if the Czar himself had been expected.
Paul I. carried his delicate attentions so far as to provide the Prince, whom he considered the King of France and Navarre, with a special guard of one hundred noble cavaliers chosen from among the former body-guard of Louis XVI. The Count of Auger, one of that unhappy sovereign's most faith- ful adherents, was appointed commander of this de-
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tachment, drawn from Condi's army and paid by the Czar.
Until 1795, when Courland and Se"migalle were annexed to the Russian Empire, Mittau had been the capital of these two duchies. It contained a population of about twelve thousand souls, and its only remarkable edifice was the chateau, situated at the end of the town on the Riga road, along the left bank of a little river called the Grosbach. It was built in the form of a square, with a courtyard in the middle, and was surrounded by a moat filled with water. Its large and well-arranged apartments made it a very suitable abode for Louis XVIII. He had with him the Count of Avaray, the Duke of Guiche, the Count of Cosse"-Brissac, the Marquis of Jaucourt, the Count of La Chapelle, the Duke of Villequier, the Marquis of Sourdis, the Viscount of Agoult, the Chevalier of Montaignac, the Cheva- lier of Boisheuil, M. de Guilhermy, a former deputy 'to the States- General, and M. de Courvoisier. His almoner was the venerable Abbe* Edgeworth of Fir- mont, who had attended Louis XVI. on the scaffold.
"In this palace of a dispossessed sovereign," writes the Baron of Barante in his Notice sur le Comte de Saint- Priest, "Louis XVIII. set up a simulacrum of Versailles. The minute observances of etiquette, the presence of several former courtiers as faithful to their accustomed ways of thinking as to their humble sentiments of devotion, the old body-guards surrounding him when he went to the
MITTAU 211
chapel, and the whole petty reproduction of the pompous life of courts, where one encountered even the ambitions, jealousies, and intrigues of palace servants, formed an easy and agreeable position, for Louis XVIII. based upon his beatific consciousness of his rights; he seemed to think he was enjoying the very essentials of royalty. Sensible men, seeing him thus satisfied, pitied him less for his misfor- tunes than for his contentment."
At the beginning of his sojourn at Mittau, Louis XVIII. was treated respectfully by the Russian court, because Paul I., thoroughly engrossed by his schemes concerning the Order of Malta, wished to make royalist France enter into his religious and chivalrous combinations. Although cut off from the Roman communion by the schism of Photius, the Russian sovereign had conceived the notion of making himself grand-master of a military and religious order of which the Pope was superior. The taking of Malta, by General Bonaparte in June, 1798, had entailed the destruction of the sovereign order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The three " lan- guages " l of Provence, Auvergne, and France were no longer in existence. That of Italy was under French domination. The silence of the grand- >5master, Hompesch, who had retired to Trieste and obstinately refused to explain his conduct, decided the grand-prior of Russia to offer the grand-master-
1 The eight nations which composed the order of Saint John of Jerusalem were spoken of as languages.
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ship of the order to the Emperor Paul I. The grand-priors of Bohemia, Bavaria, and Germany determined to follow the example of Russia. The former grand-master, Hompesch, who had already sold the island of Malta to the French fleet, sold also his signature to all these acts and approved all the concessions. Thenceforward the Czar, adding the title of Grand-master of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem to that of Emperor of All the Russias, held chapters, distributed commanderies, and trans- formed his generals into crusading knights. Kou- chebef was grand-admiral of the order; Sievers, grand-hospitaller ; and Flaschlander, turcopolier. The highest mark of favor at the Russian court was a Maltese cross, a commandery, very well endowed, for that matter, in peasant souls.
A certain coolness arose between Paul I. and Louis XVIII. on the subject of the order. The Duke of Angoul^me was grand-prior of France. When the Czar apprised the young Prince of the dignity he had conferred upon himself, the latter, who regarded the proceeding as irregular, evaded the subject by saying that his approaching marriage was about to put him entirely outside of the Order of Malta. This response produced a very bad effect in Saint Petersburg. In order to appease the Czar, * the Pretender suggested that it would be well to unite the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem to the hospitaller order of Saint Lazarus, the grand-ribbon of which he sent him, accompanied by an amiable
MITT A V 213
letter which the Abbe* Edgeworth of Firmont was commissioned to deliver. But this attention did not lessen the Czar's ill- humor. On the contrary, it offended him that he should be offered the decora- tion of any order except that holding the first rank in France. He refused the ribbon of Saint Lazarus, and it became necessary to send him that of the Holy Spirit.
As a matter of fact, the idea of renewing the Order of Malta was not so fantastic on the part of Paul I. as it may seem at first glance. As has been remarked by the Abbe" Georgel, who was concerned in the affairs of the grand-priory of Germany, if Malta were retaken as was hoped, its position in the middle of the Mediterranean would afford an Emperor of Russia who was grand-master efficacious means of imposing on the Ottoman court ; moreover, the advantage of being at the head of all the nobility of Europe would considerably augment the influ- ence which the Russian Emperors have always been ambitious to exercise in the political affairs of the continent.
In reality, Louis XVIII., as the heir of Saint Louis and the eldest son of the Church, was not well-pleased to see a schismatic prince placing him- self at the head of an order whose history was blended with that of the Holy See. There was a latent rivalry between Mittau and Saint Petersburg; if Louis XVIII. receiving not only a dwelling-place, but an annual pension of 200,000 roubles from the
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Czar, felt himself somewhat humiliated by living on the charitable subsidies of a foreign power, Paul I., on the other hand, was occasionally jealous of a guest whose blazon was far more illustrious than his own. The Baron of Barante, in his Notice sur le Comte de Saint-Priest, has made the following obser- vation on this head: "The hospitality accorded by the Emperor Paul was in nowise sympathetic. The royal title was never recognized; no visit of the French princes to Saint Petersburg was ever authorized; never did the Emperor or his sons come to Mittau to console the exiled royal family. Louis was incessantly obliged to entreat privileges or ask for consideration. At Saint Petersburg people mocked at the etiquette of the little court at Mittau, at the receptions, the royal Mass, the body-guards, the dinner served at two tables — all of those usages that consorted ill with a humble position, and bore too little resemblance to the simple, easy military fashions of the Russian court, where etiquette is reserved for great and rare occasions." It was an essentially precarious hospitality which the daughter of Louis XVI. was to receive at Mittau after so many trials and disasters of every sort. A clear- sighted observer could already have predicted that the Czar's enthusiasm for Louis XVIII. and the French emigration would be of short duration.
VII
THE ARKIVAL OF MARIE THERESE
LOUIS XVIII. had been at Mittau more than a year without being able to summon his wife and his niece to rejoin him there. And he desired a reunion with his wife, who was then under the influence of Madame de Gourbillon, though less from sentiment than convenience. The Queen, as she was called, demanded an establishment entirely out of keeping with their common poverty. "The statement forwarded to M. de Villequier by M. de Virieu," wrote the Pretender, "would certainly be very moderate for the Queen of France, but circum- stances oblige us to abridge it still further." He cut off three of the persons named by the Princess as requisite for her service. Moreover, Paul I. was beginning to find that the little court at Mittau cost him too much. The Count of Saint-Priest, who had been sent to Saint Petersburg to ask for increased supplies, said in a letter to Louis XVIII. : " Your Majesty would be amazed at the mean way in which this court treats the affair of the Queen and Madame Therese at Mittau. It is very unlike the display got up for Your Majesty's journey. They
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say the Emperor is so annoyed by the large party of forty-four accompanying the Marshal of Broglie that he has said: 'Are we in Peru, or are they on a pillaging expedition ? ' '
Through economy and for other reasons, Louis XVIII. was especially anxious to get rid of Madame de Gourbillon, whom he found disagreeable. He wrote to his wife, May 31, 1799: "If my entreaties and our affection do not move you, and you can resolve to compromise me with the Emperor of Russia, whom your resistance must have given very queer ideas about us two, Madame Gourbillon may come to Mittau, but I swear that she shall not set foot in the palace. Once more, my dear friend, yield to our affection, and let the joy I shall expe- rience at seeing you again be increased, if that is possible, by this condescension on your part. I feel no hesitation in urging this, because it is solely your own interest that causes me to speak."
If Louis XVIII. was but moderately anxious for a reunion with his wife, he was ardently desirous to see his niece arrive ; for he thoroughly understood the prestige and poetic charm which the presence of the orphan of the Temple would diffuse over the royal cause and the little court of Mittau. Already there was something legendary about the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. She awak- ened an interest mingled with veneration wherever she appeared, and her uncle knew very well that in Russia as well as in France, Switzerland, and Aus-
THE AEEIVAL OF MAEIE THERESE 217
tria, she would not merely touch imaginations, but move hearts. As to the Duke of Angouleme, he was awaiting his young betrothed with extreme impatience; as early as January 9, 1799, he had written to several £migr£s to announce the speedy conclusion of an event upon which he declared the happiness of his life depended.
The Queen arrived at Mittau June 3, 1799. She had not seen her husband in eight years, and the pair were perfectly accustomed to live far apart. Madame de Gourbillon did not reside in the chateau, but had a lodging in the neighborhood.
The next day, June 4, occurred the long-desired reunion between Louis XVIII. and his niece, Marie The're'se. The King set off to meet her very early in the morning. The first post-house had been appointed for the rendezvous, but the young Prin- cess travelled so fast that she reached it before the King, and went further along the highroad to meet him. As soon as the two carriages came near each other, she alighted. Louis XVIII. and the Duke of Angouleme did likewise. The young Princess pressed toward her uncle through clouds of dust, and he, with arms extended, ran to meet and press her to his heart. Unable to prevent her from throwing herself at his feet, he hastened to lift her up. "At last I see you again," she exclaimed. "At last I am happy. Watch over me, be my father." As the Count of Saint-Priest wrote to the Chevalier Verne"gues: "Tears and sobs were the
218 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
first proofs of the profound sentiments that filled their hearts. The first tribute rendered to nature and to the memory of such misfortunes gave place to expressions of the tenderest recognition. Mgr. the Duke of Angouleme, withheld by respect, yet urged forward by a thousand different sentiments, wept over his cousin's hand, while the King, in the deepest emotion, and with eyes filled with tears, pressed the Princess to his heart, and at the same time presented the husband he had given her. The King, so good and so worthy of a better fate, placed thus between his adopted children, felt for the first time that he might still enjoy some moments of happiness."
Louis XVIII. had not seen his niece since June 20, 1791, at the moment when the fatal journey to Varennes began. Eight years had passed since then. An accomplished young girl had succeeded to the graceful child. What physical and moral progress ! What a soft and penetrating charm ! A fair lily that had survived a cruel storm might have been taken as an emblem by this young virgin who had suffered and wept so much, and who bore the marks of an incurable sadness on her melancholy and affecting countenance. The Count of Saint- Priest writes: "We admire in the features and bearing of Marie The'rdse, and in her speech and the animation of her countenance, the loftiness and grace of Marie Antoinette. France will recog- nize in her, with joy as well as sadness, the features
THE ARRIVAL OF MARIE TUERESE 219
of the unfortunate Louis XVI., embellished by youth, freshness, and serenity; and by a happy chance, the Princess reminds one of Madame Elisa- beth also."
Shouts of joy resounded on all sides when the daughter of the martyr King and Queen arrived at the chateau of Mittau. "Everybody ran," says the Abbe* de Tressau, a witness of this pathetic scene ; "all coldness and disagreements were at an end; it seemed a sanctuary in which all hearts were about to blend. Hungry glances were fastened on the Queen's apartment. It was not until after Marie Therese had paid her respects to Her Majesty that, conducted by the King, she came to show herself to our eyes, too drowned in tears to be able to distin- guish her features." Louis XVIII. led her at first to the Abbe* Edgeworth of Firmont, presenting her afterwards to the former body-guards of Louis XVI., saying as he did so : " Here are the faithful guards of those whom we lament." Then, turning towards these servitors, as devoted to him as they had been to his unfortunate brother, he added: "At last she is ours; we will never leave her again; we are no longer strangers to happiness."
Emotion reached its height untouched by any falsity or exaggeration, for it had its source in those sentiments of morality and pity which do honor to the human soul. After returning to her apartment, the young Princess sent for the Abbd Edgeworth, him who had said to Louis XVI. on the steps of the
220 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
scaffold: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven." When she found herself face to face with the vener- able priest whose presence evoked souvenirs so cruel yet so august, she nearly fainted. Alarmed, he wished to call for assistance. "No," she said, "let me weep before you alone. These tears console me."
"The royal family dined alone," the Abbe* de Tressau writes again, "and towards five o'clock in the evening we had the honor of being presented to Madame. This was our first opportunity to contem- plate her whole appearance. It seemed as though heaven had wished to unite to her freshness and beauty a sacred character which should render her more dear and venerable to the French people. Her countenance reminded us of Louis XVI., of Marie Antoinette, and of Madame Elisabeth. These august resemblances are so great that we felt the need of invoking those whom they recalled. These souvenirs and the presence of Madame seemed to bring heaven and earth together, and assuredly whenever she wishes to speak in their name, her gentle and generous soul will compel all sentiments to conform to hers."
And the royalist priest adds, in a dithyrambic and enthusiastic style then assumed by the courtiers of exile and misfortune, but which later on, under the Restoration, was too often employed by the courtiers of fortune : " Frenchmen I behold her whom you alone can render happy by returning to your former vir- tues and your love for your kings. Behold her
THE ARRIVAL OF MARIE THERESE 221
who asks to return among you, in order to be, in union with the King her uncle, the executrix of the testament of Louis XVI., concerning which their hearts are in such accord: the pardon of injuries. She comes, her heart full of tender and religious sentiments, to love and console you for your long afflictions. She comes to ennoble your courage and legitimate your glory. She comes adorned by her innocence and youth, her griefs and her resem- blances. She comes surrounded by that tribute of good wishes due to her from all that is honest, loyal, sensible, and faithful on this earth. She comes like the angel of peace to disarm vengeance and cause the furies of war to cease. Let your hearts recall her, and you will see your harbors open and your commerce reborn; your children will no longer be torn from your arms and led to death ; you will find repose, happiness, and the esteem of the universe."
Marie The're'se at once became attached to her young betrothed. Son of the Count of Artois (the future Charles X.) and Marie The're'se of Savoy, the daughter of Victor Amadeus III., King of Sardinia, Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Angoul£me, was not yet twenty-four years old, having been born at Versailles, August 6, 1775. Leaving France with his father in 1789, after the taking of the Bastille, he went to his grandfather, the King of Sardinia, at Turin. He left the dominions of that Prince in August, 1792, and made a campaign in Germany with Condi's army. He afterwards
222 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
spent some time at Holyrood, near Edinburgh, with his father, whence he went to his uncle, Louis XVIII., at Blankenburgh, and followed him to Mittau. He was not remarkable for wit or elegance, but he had solid qualities — great courage, good sense, loyalty, and religious sentiments. He under- stood and admired the virtues of his betrothed. Concerning him, Count d'Avaray wrote in June, 1799: "Our young Prince daily acquires more of that deportment and dignity which he lacked." The marriage, for which the preparations were nearly concluded, was to be like a rainbow to the little court of Mittau, making its appearance after a suc- cession of storms.
VIII
THE MARRIAGE
daughter of Louis XVI. arrived at Mittau JL June 4, 1799. Her marriage was celebrated six days later, June 10. We are indebted for the unpublished documents we are about to cite to the courtesy of M. Ernest Daudet, who is not only one of our best novelists, but a historian as conscientious as he is remarkable. He has composed an important work on the Bourbons and Russia during the emigra- tion, and has selected in the imperial archives of Saint Petersburg and Moscow the documents he has kindly communicated to us.
Two days after her arrival, Marie The're'se wrote the following letter to the Emperor Paul : " Mittau, June 6, 1799. Sire, at the court of Vienna and before myself becoming the object of the sentiments of Your Imperial Majesty, my heart shared all the obligations owed by the King, my uncle, and a part of my family to your kindness, as well as the eternal gratitude due to you by so many titles. On enter- ing your dominions and finding such proofs of your interest in me, my heart feels the need of expressing to Your Majesty the sentiments which inspire it.
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It is to you that my relatives owe a royal shelter, a noble and active interest in their fate, and effica- cious alleviations of their griefs. If I, on rejoining my family, am about to accomplish the sacred will of the authors of my being, this again is a benefit due to our magnanimous protector. Such are at once the motives and the guarantees of the entire confidence and lively gratitude I have vowed to Your Majesty, whom I entreat to accept this expres- sion of them. With the profoundest respect for your Imperial Majesty, I am your most affectionate sister and cousin."
Sixteen years before, the Grand Duke Paul, heir- apparent of Russia, travelling in France under the name of Count du Nord, had regretfully left the court of Versailles, where he had received a most delightful hospitality. He had been struck by the pretty ways of the future Duchess of Angouleme, then in her fourth year, and at the moment of part- ing she had said to him: "I will go to see you." What terrible events had brought about the fulfil- ment of this promise !
Louis XVIII. 's protestations of gratitude to the Czar bordered on humility. He wrote to him on May 18 : " Monsieur my Brother and Cousin, I can- not see the moment approaching when the marriage of my nephew with my niece will be celebrated, without again reminding myself that it is wholly to your Imperial Majesty that I owe this greatly desired event. My lively gratitude inspires me to
THE MARRIAGE 225
endeavor to preserve the souvenir of it for posterity by praying Your Imperial Majesty to allow the act which is about to unite my children to be deposited in the archives of this Empire, in any place Your Imperial Majesty may be pleased to indicate, in order to serve as an eternal testimony of the gen- erous hospitality and constant support which my family and I have received from Your Imperial Majesty in our afflictions. I hope that Your Majesty will be so good as to acquaint me with your inten- tions in this respect. I desire extremely, moreover, that the signature of Your Imperial Majesty should imprint the seal of good fortune upon this act; but the dread of being indiscreet causes me to abstain from preferring a formal request, although the grant- ing of it would greatly increase my satisfaction. I beg to assure Your Imperial Majesty of the vivacity of the sentiments with which I am, Monsieur, my Brother and Cousin, Your Imperial Majesty's good brother and cousin."
The royal family was represented by only four persons at the marriage: Louis XVIII., his wife, the Duke of Angouleme, and Marie The'rdse of France, who, when a young girl, was called Madame Royale. The father of the Duke of Angouleme, the Count of Artois (the future Charles X.), who as the brother of Louis XVIII. was styled Monsieur, had been unable to come to Mittau on account of his anxiety to remain near France, where the royal- ists were then deluding themselves with the idea
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that coming events would prove favorable to their cause. The Countess of Artois, his wife, was pre- vented from going to Russia by the state of her health. The young Duke of Berry, younger brother of the Duke of Angouleme, was marching under the banners of Conde", then crossing Europe with a Russian army to fight against the troops of France. The Count of Artois had given his consent to his son's marriage with the daughter of Louis XVI. more than three years before. It was expressed in the following letter, dated at Edinburgh, April 20, 1796, and addressed by the future Charles X. to his brother, Louis XVIII. : "Sire, my Brother and Lord, I entreat Your Majesty to receive kindly the hom- age of my lively and respectful gratitude for the consent you have been so good as to grant to the marriage of my eldest son, the Duke of Angouleme, with Madame The're'se, daughter of the late King our brother, and for all the pains you have taken with a view to form and hasten a union so suitable in all respects and so calculated to assure the happi- ness of the two spouses. My entire confidence in Your Majesty is a sentiment dictated by my heart as well as by my duty. Hence I dare entreat you to allow me to leave entirely to your affection for me and for the young couple the care of fixing the place and epoch of the marriage and regulating all its conditions. Your Majesty's service obliging me to remain at a distance from you for the time, I beg you to approve of my binding myself by letter to
THE MARRIAGE 227
ratify beforehand all that Your Majesty may think it right to regulate and arrange for this marriage, and to ratify it afterwards by my signature. Heaven will bless a union consecrated by our misfortunes, and the family of which Your Majes'ty is the head will receive the only consolation of which it is susceptible. Nothing remains except to entreat Your Majesty to deign to consider the young spouses as your* own children, and to believe that every faculty of my heart and soul will be hereafter at your service even unto death. With the pro- foundest respect, I am, Sire, my brother and lord, of Your Majesty the very humble, very obedient, and very affectionate brother, subject, and servant, — CHARLES-PHILIPPE."
The papal dispensation necessary for a marriage between cousins-gennan had been accorded by Pius VI., February 3, 1796.
The nuptial benediction was given to the youth- ful pair, June 19, 1799, in one of the galleries of the palace of Mittau, by Cardinal Montmorency- Laval, Grand-Almoner of France. An altar had been arranged in the gallery adorned by green boughs and lilacs interwoven with lilies and roses. The nobility of Courland, the Roman Catholic clergy of Mittau, and the principal inhabitants of the town were present at the ceremony, as well as M. de Driensen, the civil governor, M. de Fersen, the military governor, the Greek Catholic priest, and the Lutheran minister. Louis XVIII. , escorted by
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his body-guards and his entire court, gave his niece his arm. Near the prie-dieu of the Princess stood the Abb£ Edgeworth of Firmont, Louis XVI. 's con- fessor. The graceful and touching beauty of the bride, the memory of her father, her mother, and her aunt — the presence of the priest who had said at the foot of the scaffold of January 21 : " Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven ! " — the emotion of the exiled King, the tears of the courtiers of misfortune, all contributed to give the ceremony a grandiose and pathetic character.
The marriage certificate began thus: "Year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the nine- teenth day of the month of June, answering to the thirtieth of the month of May of the style followed in the Russian Empire. We, Louis Joseph de Montmorency-Laval, first Christian Baron, Cardinal- Priest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Bishop of Metz, Prince of the Holy Empire, Commendatory Abbot of the Abbeys of Saint Lucien of Beauvais, Grand-Almoner of France, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, etc., etc. By the authority of a brief from our Holy Father the Pope granting a dis- pensation from the impediment of consanguinity, the said brief recognized as authentic and visaed by the Very Reverend Francis Xavier Goldberger, provost of the Cathedral of Livonia, Vicar of the Spirituality and of Canon Law for Livonia and Courland, and pastor of the Catholic parish of Mittau . . . also by the express consent of the afore-
THE MARRIAGE 229
said Very Reverend Francis Xavier Goldberger, by which he authorizes us to proceed to the celebration of the said marriage in one of the halls of the pal- ace situated in the said Catholic parish of Mittau, arranged for the purpose, and to bless it in the form prescribed by the Church ; we, in the aforesaid hall, and after the betrothal there celebrated, have re- ceived the mutual consent of the high contracting parties, and have given them the nuptial benediction with the ceremonies prescribed by Holy Church. Present and consenting, the very high, very powerful, and veiy excellent prince His Majesty the King, in his said high quality as well as in that of lawful guardian of the bride, and commissioned by an act under his privy seal to declare the consent of the very high and very powerful Prince Monseigneur Charles Philippe of France, Son of France, Monsieur, brother of the King, father of the bridegroom, which consent the copy signed by M. the Count of Saint-Priest, Minister and Secretary of State, and sealed with his seal, remains annexed to the present act; and also to declare the consent of Madame Marie The'r.e'se of Savoy, Madame, his mother, of which consent His Majesty and the two spouses have perfect cogni- zance. Present and consenting also, the very high, very powerful, and very excellent princess Her Majesty the Queen."
Louis XVIII. signed, Louis; the Queen, Marie Josephine Louise; the Duke of Angouleme, Louis Antoine ; the Duchess of Angouleme, Marie The're'se
230 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
Charlotte. The certificate was also signed by the witnesses, who were: Louis de Rosset de Fleury, duke and peer of France, colonel of dragoons and first gentleman of the King's bedchamber; Louis d'Aumont, Duke of Villequier, first gentleman of the King's bedchamber, lieutenant-general of the armies of His Majesty; Francois de Guignard, Count of Saint-Priest, lieutenant-general of the King's armies, minister and secretary of State; Louis, Count of Mailly, Marquis of Nesle, first equerry to Her Majesty the Queen, marshal of the camp and armies of the King; Frangois de Cosse"- Brissac, Count of Cosse*, marshal of the camps and armies of the King, captain-colonel of the Hundred- Switzers of His Majesty's Guard; Antoine de Gra- mont, Duke of Guiche, marshal of the camps and armies of the King, captain of the first and most ancient French company of the King's body-guards ; Antoine de Be'ziade, Count of Avaray, marshal of the camps and armies of the King, and captain of the Scotch company of his guards; Henri Essex Edgeworth of Firmont, priest and vicar-general of the diocese of Paris, almoner and confessor to the King; the Abbe' Marie, priest of the house and society of Sorbonne, former under-preceptor of the children of the Count of Artois, and appointed first almoner of Their Royal Highnesses. It was signed also by Cardinal de Montmorency- Laval and the pastor of the Catholic parish of Mittau.
The marriage was followed by a dinner at which
THE MAERIAGE 231
the most notable persons of the court were present, and also M. Guilhermy, deputy of the third estate to the States-General of 1789. Louis XVIII. said with emotion to the guests : " This is the fSte of the French people; my happiness would be complete if I could have assembled here all those who signalized themselves like you by courageous fidelity to the King my brother." On the same day he addressed the subjoined letter to the Czar: "Mittau, June 10, 1799. Monsieur my Brother and Cousin, the generous exertions of Your Imperial Majesty have had their effect: my children were united this morn- ing, and my gratitude equals my joy as I hasten to announce this news to Your Imperial Majesty, and to ask that your goodness may continue to be extended to a pair who will owe all their happiness to you. I take the liberty of enclosing a letter from my nephew ; the sentiments he expresses in it can- not be unknown to the great soul of Your Imperial Majesty, and with all my heart I add my prayers to his."
Louis XVIII. wrote again to the Emperor Paul, June 13: "Monsieur my Brother and Cousin, I have received, almost at the same time, two letters from Your Imperial Majesty, of the 2d and the 7th of this month, and I am extremely touched by what you so kindly say concerning the family reunion and the marriage of my children. This event could not have taken place under happier auspices, since it is under those of Your Imperial Majesty, in your
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dominions, and by your generous assistance that so desired a union has at last been celebrated, and your victories have adorned the f£te. I have exe- cuted Your Majesty's commission to the Queen. Penetrated as she must be by the friendship of which Your Imperial Majesty has shown us so many proofs, she nevertheless fears to render herself importunate by expressing the sentiments that fill her heart, and I have undertaken to be the spokesman of her gratitude." A King of France and Navarre who avows that the Queen his wife fears to be indiscreet in writing a letter of grateful acknowledgment, certainly does not employ the language of pride.
The Emperor Paul I. signed the marriage certifi- cate and ordered it to be deposited in the archives of the Russian Senate. Chateaubriand has said : " Thus in a foreign land and amid foreign religions was performed a marriage one of whose witnesses was the foreign priest who attended Louis XVI. to the scaffold; a foreign senate received the certificate of celebration. There was no longer any room for the marriage contract of the daughter of Louis XVI. in that treasury of charters where that between Anne of Russia and Henri I. of France had been depos- ited."
On the wedding day, Louis XVIII. wrote a letter to the Prince of Conde*, beginning thus: "At last, my dear Cousin, one of my most ardent wishes is accomplished, my children are united. I find in my niece, with an emotion more readily felt than
THE MARRIAGE 233
expressed, the blended traits of the unhappy authors of her existence. This resemblance, at once so sweet and so heart-rending, makes her dearer to me and should redouble the interest she so well deserves to inspire for her own sake in all Frenchmen. The marriage was celebrated this morning. I hasten to apprise you of it, being certain that you will share my joy."
The army of Conde*, in which the Duke of Berry was then serving, had arrived at Friedek in Aus- trian Silesia when this letter from Louis XVIII. reached the Prince. He communicated the follow- ing passage of it to the troops: "Announce this happy news to the army. It cannot but seem a good omen to your brave companions at the time when, following in your traces, they are about to re-enter the career they have so gloriously pursued. Add from me that I begin to regain happiness, but that it will not be complete until the day when I shall be able to rejoin them at the post where honor calls me."
Finally, Louis XVIII. addressed a circular con- cerning the marriage of the Duke of AngoulSme to his agents and diplomatic envoys, in which he said: " This alliance overwhelms me with joy ; but what- ever personal happiness it may promise me, I rejoice far less on my own account than on that of my faithful subjects. They will see with emotion the sole offspring of the martyr-King, whom we deplore, fixed permanently near the throne. And for my part, when death shall prevent my laboring further
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for their welfare, I shall at least have given them a mother who can never forget her own misfortunes save in rendering her children happy, and on whom Providence has bestowed all the virtues and quali- ties necessary to success."
In spite of the splendor with which the little court of Mittau tried to surround the marriage of a daughter and a grandson of France, poverty — for in reality they had nothing to live on but the alms of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Spain — prevented the young married pair from receiving or offering rich presents. The Countess of Artois sent her new daughter-in-law a dressing-case. At the time of her departure from Vienna the young Prin- cess had received from the Empress a portrait of the latter, set in diamonds. The Archduke Albert offered her two work-tables with ten thousand florins in one of the drawers. Whatever desire she may have felt to do so, the daughter of Louis XVI. could distribute no presents, because she had no fortune, and her marriage contract contained nothing but hopes. Nevertheless, she gave to the Countess of Chanclos, who had been grand-mistress of her house- hold at Vienna, a medallion worth four thousand florins, and to Mademoiselle de Chanclos, her niece, an aigrette of diamonds. Mgr. de La Fare, Bishop of Nancy, who represented Louis XVIII. at Vienna (later on he was Archbishop of Sens, cardinal, duke, and peer, and first-almoner to the Dauphiness) received a charming miniature of the young Prin- cess. This miniature, painted at Vienna by Fuger,
THE HARBIAGE 235
belongs at present to the Viscountess of Jauze'e, born Choiseul-Goufifiev, a woman distinguished by her wit and talents. The orphan of the Temple is repre- sented in a very simple costume; a black robe, a fichu of white muslin, and a knot of black taffeta on her head; a medallion containing two miniature portraits of the martyred King and Queen hangs on the breast from a chain passing round her neck. The young Princess, in all the freshness of her twenty years, has features of an exquisite delicacy, very clear blue eyes, extremely fair hair, a brilliant color, a small and pleasing mouth, an infinitely gentle smile, and a simple, affecting expression. The Duchess of Angouleme was not pretty very long, but at the time of her marriage she was ravishing.
It is curious, but there are women whom history represents as always young, others who are always old. If one names Gabrielle d'Estre'es for example, or Mademoiselle de La Valliere, or Madame de Mon- U'span, the image of a brilliant beauty is evoked. But if Madame de Maintenon is mentioned, one usu- ally thinks of an old and awkward woman; the siren who made so many conquests in her youth is for- gotten. In general, when reflecting on the Duchess of ' Angouleme, one imagin 3S her with a gloomy countenance and features hardened by age; the period when her young and melancholy beauty had such a poetic charm that even the most ardent repub- licans could not behold her without a mixture of tenderness, sympathy, and admiration, is too seldom thought of.
IX
THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAT7
IF the daughter of Louis XVI. had married a foreign prince, the crown of France would have lost its purest gem. The Duchess of Angouleme rendered the court in exile more moral, graver, and more religious than it had been. No one forgot himself when speaking in the presence of a woman at once so young and so virtuous. To see her was to be edified. The court of Mittau was as serious as that of Coblentz had been frivolous. Who would have dared utter a scandalous word before the orphan of the Temple ? It would have been unwise for the Voltairians to risk an impious allusion in her presence. In her the double majesty of virtue and misfortune was still stronger than that of birth and rank. Whether Frenchmen or foreigners, all who had the honor of approaching her experienced a sentiment of profound veneration. She considered herself destined by Providence to preserve the mem- ory of her parents, the martyred King and Queen, and every one respected this vocation, or, say rather, this cult. Charitable and Christian, the Duchess of Angouleme bore ill-will to nobody, but she gave her
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THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 237
confidence and friendship only to those whom she thought worthy of her esteem. Immoral persons, whatever their wit, social position, or brilliant qual- ities, had no standing with her. She liked nothing but what was honest and loyal. In her opinion, politics should be based on right, justice, and morality.
The Count of Saint-Priest wrote to M. de La Fare, June 27, 1799: "The young family continues to get along marvellously well ; we need only hope to soon see the fruits of it. Mademoiselle de Choisy is very well treated by the King and others; she seems content with Mademoiselle de Se'rent, her companion, and with the latter's mother; the father will soon arrive."
While at Vienna, Marie The'rese had singled out Mademoiselle Henriette de Choisy among all the female £migr£s residing in that city. She was the daughter of that heroic Marquis of Choisy who seized Cracow in the night of February 2, 1772, with twelve hundred patriotic Poles and twenty-five French noblemen, and held it through a siege of several weeks against eighteen thousand Russians. His two sons were serving in Condi's army. "It would be hard to find a more virtuous, more esteemed, or more meritorious family," wrote Mgr. de La Fare. Marie The'r&se brought Mademoiselle de Choisy from Vienna to Mittau as a maid of honor. Madame and Mademoiselle de Se'rent, who were likewise with her at Mittau, were the wife and
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daughter of the Duke of Se*rent, one of the most faithful adherents of royalty. The Countess of La Tour d'Auvergne, the Duke of Se"rent, and the Marquis of Nesle also formed part of the Duchess of Angouleme's household.
At the close of the year 1799, the court of Mittau received a visitor who could not fail to impress painfully the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. It was the Abb6 Georgel, the grand- vicar, confidant, right-hand-man of the sorry hero of the necklace affair, Cardinal de Rohan, who had been so fatal to the unfortunate Queen. During the Cardinal's imprisonment in the Bastille, the Abbe* Georgel, acting as grand-vicar of the grand-almonry of France, had thought it his duty to quote, in the regulations for Lent of 1786, the epistle in which the captive Saint Paul exhorts his disciple Timothy not to be ashamed of his prison, and to break the bread of the Lord in his name to the faithful. These regulations, posted up at the doors and sac- risties of the palace chapel at Versailles, had given scandal. It was claimed that in comparing the prisoner of the Bastille to Saint Paul, Cardinal de Rohan's grand-vicar had implicitly compared Louis XVI. to Nero, and he was banished to the provinces.
The Abbe* Georgel was in Fribourg with other SmiyrSs in 1799, when the chapters of the grand- priories of Bohemia, Bavaria, and Germany ap- pointed deputies to go to Saint Petersburg and offer the homage of their obedience to the new
THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 239
grand-master of the Order of Malta, the Emperor Paul I. The Abbe" Georgel was a member of this deputation, aud passed through Mittau on his way to Saint Petersburg. He thus describes in his Me- moirs the reception he met from Louis XVIII. : —
"After Mass the King received the deputation in the audience chamber; he was surrounded by the notabilities of his court; his face announced the tranquillity of his soul ; his conversation was inter- esting by reason of the kind and amiable things he said to the deputies about their families and their mission. Louis XVIII. had a good deal of knowl- edge and intelligence ; misfortune, which is a great lesson, especially for sovereigns, had removed the varnish of pedantry which people criticised at Ver- sailles. He was simply dressed in a blue coat and red collar, the modest and prescribed uniform of his entire court, in order to save expense. His Majesty hud the extreme kindness to remember having seen me at Versailles. After the King's audience we repaired to that of the Queen. On leaving her apartment we were conducted to those of the Duke aud Duchess of Angouleme."
The daughter of Marie Antoinette could not see without distress a priest who recalled such painful memories. The Abbe* Georgel shall describe the meeting. "The countenance of the Duchess," he says, "seemed to us full of majesty and grace; on seeing her my heart experienced a respectful emo- tion. Hut T must own that when the Duke of
240 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
Se'rent named me to this august Princess, I per- ceived a trouble which perceptibly altered her expression. I was struck with it; the presentation was shortened; in reflecting on it, I thought that my presence must have recalled a trial in which I had been an actor, the successful issue of which for the illustrious accused had so strongly affected the Queen her mother, that, considering herself offended, she had induced the King to become the accuser. If I could have foreseen this, I would have absented myself from the presentation through respect."
However, the court of Mittau continued to enjoy comparative tranquillity. The lords and ladies who composed it were found in food and firing by the King, or, to speak more exactly, by the Czar, and received an annual salary of one hundred louis. They dined at four o'clock with the King and Queen and the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme. The court appointments were held by the Duke of Aumont, the Prince of Pienne, the Duke of Fleury, the Count of Avaray, the Marquis of Jaucourt, the Count of Cosse"-Brissac, the Count of La Chapelle, the Duke of Guiche, and the Count of Saint-Priest. Lack of money was what the court of Mittau chiefly suffered from. Every one felt that a situation in which all depended on the caprice of foreign sover- eigns was extremely precarious. Paul I. gave Louis XVIII. an annual pension of two hundred thousand roubles, which he increased by one hundred and twenty thousand livres after the arrival of the
THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 241
Queen and Marie The'r&se. The King of Spain gave eighty-four thousand livres a year, but with a very bad grace. Concerning this, Louis XVIII. wrote : " I own that I have never suffered more from my poverty; if I consulted my own judgment, I would send my cousin and all his reals to the devil." And in a letter of August 25, 1799, the Count of Saint-Priest said to Mgr. de La Fare: " The King does not blame you for having received letters from Their Catholic Majesties addressed to the Count of Provence" (in order not to embroil themselves with the French Republic, the Spanish Bourbons gave no other title to Louis XVIII. ). "His Majesty, though much dissatisfied with such an address, cannot refuse the letters, his situation forcing him to receive the very meagre subsidies of the King his cousin, who declines very flatly to augment them. The Queen no longer writes to him."
The Duchess of Angouleme, who had the keenest sense of her family dignity and renown, suffered greatly from this state of affairs. To this grief was added that of seeing her husband depart for the pur- pose of rejoining the Duke of Berry in Conde*'s army. Before leaving Mittau the Duke of Angou- leme wrote this letter to the Czar, dated August 5, 1800: "Sire, the moment having arrived for me to go whither honor, duty, and the service of the King my uncle call me, I hasten to lay at the feet of Your Imperial Majesty the homage of my lively gratitude
242 TIIK DUCHESS OF ANGOULEM i>:
for all the favors with which you have deigned to overwhelm me during my sojourn in your empire. Forced to separate myself temporarily from the being who is dearest to me, I venture to take the liberty of recommending her to Your Imperial Majesty. I venture to hope that you will permit me, if circum- stances and my duty do not forbid, to return and pass the winter here with my wife. We unite in entreating Your Imperial Majesty to accept the homage of our respect and admiration and, if you will permit us to say so, of our attachment to your person, — Louis ANTOINE."
Accompanied by the Count of Damas-Crux and the Chevalier Saint-Priest, the Duke of Angouleiuc rejoined Condi's army at Pontaba, May 25, 1800. Chateaubriand says : " The army received this other heir of Saint Louis with transport. . . . Conde"s corps, forced to a long and retrograde march, entered the Austrian army in line on the banks of the Inn. The Duke of Berry on arriving at camp found them in this position. The meeting between the two brothers was touching. The Duke of Berry was serving as a simple volunteer in the noble cavalry regiment he had formed, and of which the Duke of Angouleme had taken command. Obeying his elder brother like the meanest soldier, he gave a new example of that submission rendered to each other by the members of the royal family in the order of heredity: a submission which not only displays the virtues natural to the Bourbons, but which still
THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 243
preserves the throne by becoming a sort of authentic and perpetual confession of the principle of legiti- macy." (Chateaubriand wrote this ten years before the Revolution of 1830.)
In 1800, before the battles of Marengo and Hohen- linden, Louis XVIII. deceived himself greatly con- cerning the chances of a restoration he thought imminent. He sent the Count of Saint-Priest to Vienna with long and detailed instructions begin- ning thus: "Mittau, May 26, 1800. I am so con- vinced that upon the recognition of my royal title by the belligerent Powers, on my drawing nearer to the frontiers of my realm, and especially on my activity, depends the conclusion of the most fatal revolution of which history offers an example, that I do not hesitate to deprive myself temporarily of the services of the Count of Saint-Priest and charge him to go and treat of these important points with the ministers of His Imperial and Royal Majesty. Nevertheless I should not have confided this mission to him if I had not wished to give more formality to the agreement that will result from it, by charging the man in whom I place most confidence to sign it in my name.
"I charge M. the Count of Saint-Priest, then, to induce the Emperor, my nephew, to recognize me as King of France and Navarre, and to consent that, bearing this title, I shall go in person to his army in Italy, or, if His Imperial and Royal Majesty prefers, to the auxiliary corps of Piedmontese com-
244 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
manded by ray brother-in-law, the Duke of Aosta. Let it be understood that I ask for no command. I desire only to be where I can rally my faithful or repentant subjects to my side, and combat those who persist in their aberration. The position of a volunteer in the allied army would suffice me for this end. I would consent, however, yielding to neces- sity, that my activity should be temporarily sus- pended, if for reasons which I cannot foresee, it is judged to be as yet impracticable; but then His Imperial Majesty, while authentically recognizing my royal title, should indicate a town in Piedmont, in the state of Genoa, or in Tuscany, where I could repair and hold myself in the closest possible prox- imity to events, remaining always at liberty to go towards that part of my kingdom where I should judge my presence to be necessary. In fine, if the recognition of my royal title does not take place immediately, the court of Vienna should at least promise to proclaim it in a near future to be deter- mined by the success of the war."
M. de Barante, in his notice on the Count of Saint-Priest, has severely criticised the royal in- structions: "These documents are curious," he says. " In them Louis XVIII. shows himself greatly con- cerned for his royal dignity and the honor of France. Certainly, these sentiments were sincere, but they are expressed in such a manner that they cause astonishment by their ignorance of France and Eu- rope, by their inert confidence in the force of divine
THE END OF THE SOJOUEN AT MITTAU 245
right, and their miserable dependence on foreign Powers. Hence, this ro}ral arrogance, this patriotic movement, go so wide astray that they neither prove energy nor veritable pride. To estimate the worth of these instructions it suffices to add that M. de Saint-Priest, who carried them, reached Vienna on the day before the news of the battle of Marengo arrived. The principal request of Louis XVIII. was that Austria should authorize him to repair to her army in Italy; she had just lost all Italy."
The loss of the battle of Marengo by the Austrians brought on an armistice which on different occasions was prolonged until October 20, 1800. Condi's army, stationed on the Inn, defended the passage of this river from Wissemburg to Neubeieren. A skirmish took place at Ravenheim, December 1. According to Chateaubriand, the Prince of Conde* was obliged to use his authority to make the two Princes retire, as they were uselessly exposing themselves: a soldier close by the elder had been struck by a ball. The author of the Crenie du Christianisme adds this really singular remark: "Two days later, the battle of Hohenlinden was gained by a general1 who wanted to acquire great renown in order that he might lay it at the feet of his legitimate King."
The check received by the Coalition had indefi- nitely adjourned the expectations of the court of Mittau. Paul I. was disgusted with his allies. He
1 Moreau.
246 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
would not fight against France any longer. He became infatuated with the First Consul, and was about to show himself as hostile to Louis XVIII. as he had at first been well disposed. The moment was at hand when the little court of Mittau would be driven out of the Russian Empire.
THE DEPARTURE FROM MITTAU
LOUIS XVIII. 'S cause seemed desperate. The First Consul was at the summit of glory. The continental Powers emulated each other in their assiduous attentions to him. The Czar's admiration was enthusiastic. Deceived in all his expectations, the heir of Louis XVI. was about to be driven out of Mittau like an outlaw, like a pariah, and his faithful attendants to be reduced to beggary. With- out money and shelterless, he wandered miserably about, living on alms, and subject to the caprices of his temporary hosts. After the inexpressible afflic- tions of captivity in the Temple, Marie The'rese was to endure those of exile in their most rigorous and painful form. Her truly intrepid soul did not sink under the weight of these new trials.
How was it that the profound sympathy enter- tained for Louis XVIII. by the versatile Paul I. had been transfigured into absolute aversion ? Why did he regard his former enemies with affection and his former allies with hatred? How could he pub- licly drink the health of the First Consul and fill his apartments with portraits of the victor of Marengo ?
247
248 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
The chief cause of this unexpected change was the Czar's dissatisfaction with the conduct of his former allies. He attributed to them the defeat of the Russian army at Zurich and the capitulation of the Russian and English troops that had landed in Holland. He reproached himself for having placed his soldiers at the service of a coalition from which he got nothing but reverses in return, and he prom- ised himself to consult only Russian interests there- after. On the other hand, the glory of the young victor of the Pyramids had impressed his ardent and excitable imagination. Bonaparte, turning this mood very cleverly to his own advantage, found means to subjugate the Czar completely. There were six or seven thousand Russian prisoners in France whom it had been impossible to exchange, as Russia had no French prisoners. The First Con- sul caused these Russians to be armed and uniformed in their sovereign's colors. He returned their officers, their weapons, and their flags, and sent them back to their Emperor without conditions. He added that this was a mark of consideration on his part for the Russian army, which the French had learned to know and respect on the field of battle.
Another of Bonaparte's proceedings with regard to the Emperor Paul was a real stroke of genius. Knowing that the island of Malta, an ephemeral conquest to France, could not hold out long against the British fleets, and that, being strictly blockaded, it would be obliged to surrender to the English
THE DEPASTURE FROM M1TTAU 249
through lack of provisions, he took the notion of giving it to the Czar. Such a present went straight to the heart of a sovereign who valued his title as Grand-Master of the Order of Malta as highly as his title of Emperor of all the Russias. Over- whelmed with joy, Paul I. ordered a Finnish officer, M. de Sprengporten, to place himself at the head of the Russian prisoners in France, and go with them to take possession of the island of Malta from the hands of the French. But while all this was going on, the English seized the island. The Czar demanded its restitution. They refused it. The irascible Emperor avenged himself by laying an embargo on English vessels, three hundred of which were seized at one time in the ports of his Empire, and by causing a declaration to be signed, December 26, 1800, by Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, in which the three Powers bound themselves to main- tain the principle of the rights of neutrals against England, even by force of arms.
Having become the ally of Bonaparte and the adversary of England and Austria, Paul I. troubled himself no further about the Bourbons. The Prince whom he but lately styled his august senior now seemed merely an importunate and inconvenient guest. The First Consul did not need to ask the Czar to banish him. The Emperor Paul volun- tarily expelled him and treated him most severely. Bonaparte did not require so much. Possibly he would even have preferred that Louis XVIII. should
250
remain in Russia than to have him in close proxim- ity to France. But Paul I. would hear nothing further of the Pretender who stood in the way of his new policy, and whose support at Mittau seemed to him a useless expense. Acting violently, according to his habit, he had the order of expulsion made known to him with a rudeness that approached bru- tality. He began by banishing Louis XVIII. 's representative, M. de Caraman, from Saint Peters- burg, where he had been received in the most cordial manner, but whence he was brusquely expelled without the least excuse or explanation.
M. de Caraman arrived unexpectedly at Mittau, having had no time to forewarn Louis XVIII. of the changes that had been effected at Saint Petersburg. He has recounted the details of the expulsion of the Pretender and the Duchess of Angouleme in some curious unpublished Memoirs now in possession of the present Duke of Caraman.
On January 20, 1801, the eve of the anniversary of Louis XVI. 's death, the daughter of the martyr- King was in her oratory, preparing to make her communion on the following day in memory of her father. Suddenly General Driesen, the military governor of Mittau, presented himself before Louis XVIII. and announced that his pension was with- drawn and that he must instantly leave the Russian Empire. The passports with which he was fur- nished did not even style him the Count of Pro- vence. He was called the Count of Lille and treated as a private person.
THE DEPARTURE FROM MITTAU 251
The Pretender received the Russian general calmly. "Being at Mittau through the generosity of the Emperor," said he, "I am ready to depart as soon as his sentiments change toward me." Then, as if struck by a painful memory, he reminded the general of the day of the month, saying that the morrow was the anniversary of the martyrdom of King Louis XVI., his brother, and that when this period arrived, the Duchess of Angoul^me remained shut up in her apartments, devoting herself to re- ligious duties whose only witness was the Abbd Edgeworth of Firmont, her father's confessor, who had accompanied him on the scaffold.
"Louis XVIII.," adds M. de Caraman, "asked General Driesen if it was necessary to deprive his august and unfortunate niece, whom he called his daughter, of her last remaining consolation by tear- ing her from her pious occupations. The general, greatly moved by such a scene, bowed without ven- turing to reply, and went away, leaving the King a prey to the anxiety caused by the duties he had to fulfil."
Summoning all his courage, the Pretender went to the apartments of his niece and apprised her of the Emperor Paul's determination. The Princess, without seeming disturbed, asked if the orders were so rigorous as to demand the sacrifice of the two days devoted to her father's memory. Louis XVIII. replied that they would not start until January 22, and the daughter of Louis XVI. returned to her prayers.
252 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
As soon as the news of the expulsion was made known, the Pretender's attendants gave way to despair. What was to become of the veterans who acted as his body-guards? On learning that they were not to follow their master, they could not restrain their tears. The anniversary of the execu- tion of Louis XVI. was spent in sorrowful medita- tions. The departure took place January 22. The King and his niece had been authorized to take only six persons with them. Those who were left behind were in great distress. The fugitive sovereign wished to bid them adieu, but his voice was stifled by sobs.
Two carriages were awaiting the Pretender and his niece. They set off toward the Russian frontier, accompanied by the Count of Avaray, the Abbe* Edgeworth of Firmont, the Duchess of Se"rent, the Viscount of Hardouineau, and two domestics. It was bitter cold, and it was necessary to cross the wide Lithuanian plains, covered with ice and snow. The first day, after travelling eight leagues, the fugitives found hospitality with a Courland noble- man, the Baron of Koyt. At Frauenburg, on the following day, they were obliged to take shelter in a tavern thronged by drunken peasants. The third day was terrible. A bitter storm was raging. A furious wind, driving clouds of snow before it, frightened the horses and blinded the drivers. Louis XVIII. and his niece were obliged to alight and painfully make their way through snow nearly a foot
THE DEPARTURE FROM MITTAU 253
deep. This was the scene that furnished the sub- ject of an engraving clandestinely distributed in Paris, representing the Duchess of Angouleme con- ducting Louis XVIII., who was leaning on her arm, across the snows of Lithuania, with this motto under- neath: "The French Antigone." In the evening the fugitives slept at an inn still more wretched than that of the previous night. The next day they were hospitably received by a compassionate Cour- land nobleman, the Baron of Jatz. At last, after five days of fatiguing and painful travel, they arrived at Memel, a fortified town of Eastern Prussia, where they rested for several days.
XI
THE SOJOURN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND
LOUIS XVIII. had not had time to provide himself in advance with a refuge before leav- ing Mittau. He had turned at all risks toward the nearest kingdom without knowing whether he would be received. He was doubtful of the sentiments of the Prussian court, which was then on excellent terms with the First Consul, and consequently expected a very bad reception. On approaching Prussian territory he had taken off all his decora- tions and commanded his suite to do the same. He was travelling incognito as the Count of Lille ; the Duchess of Angoul^me passed as the Marchioness of La Meilleraye. The Queen was at this period at the baths of Pyrmont in the principality of Waldeck. At the time when Louis XVIII. arrived at Memel, he was expected by no one, and the Prus- sian government had given no orders to receive him. At Mittau the Pretender bore a royal title and lived in a palace, with body-guards and the paraphernalia of sovereignty. At Memel he was only a proscribed person, hiding his royal dignity under a false name, and dwelling in a private house. "This is the 264
THE SOJOUEN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 255
fourth time," said the Count of Avaray, "that we have not had wherewithal to live on for two months. Providence has come to our aid, and I have the same confidence ; it will not abandon our master and his admirable niece. She is an angel whom heaven has left him for his consolation. . . . Ah! how well the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette has profited by the lessons and examples of her childhood!"
Louis XVIII. had intended to leave Memel for Koenigsberg on February 9, 1801. He delayed his departure for several days, because several of his body-guards arrived from Mittau in the evening of February 8. They said they had been ordered to quit that town within twenty-four hours, and that they would be followed by their comrades, driven out of the Russian Empire like malefactors. These unfortunates, who were nearly all aged and infirm, were reduced to poverty. The Pretender said to them : " Gentlemen, it gives me great consolation to see you, but it is mingled with very bitter sorrow. Providence has tried me long and in many ways, and this is not the least cruel of them. Look," he added, pointing to his left breast, despoiled of his crosses, "I cannot even wear a decoration."
On the following days the other body-guards were presented to Louis XVIII. in the order of their arrival. One of them, M. de Montlezun, could not refrain from tears. "My friend," said the Prince, taking him by the hand, "when one's heart is pure,
256 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
it is at the last extremity of adversity that a French- man should redouble his courage." Then, turning to the others: "Yes, gentlemen, if my courage should abandon me, it is among you that I should seek it and renew my vigor."
The Count of Hautefort has written in his jour- nal: "The King did not limit his concern for his body-guards to words only. He gave them a sum which in his situation was considerable. The Duchess of Angouleme also sent one hundred ducats to the Viscount of Agoult, to be divided between those who were most in need; she especially desired that her name should not be mentioned; but who could mistake the source of such a benefit? The Viscount of Agoult chartered a vessel and presided over the embarkation of his wretched companions. The King's finances being exhausted by the exor- bitant daily expenses, the Duchess of Angouleme proposed to His Majesty to sell her diamonds, an offer which was accepted with regret; but cir- cumstances hardly permitted a refusal. The Prin- cess expressly authorized the Duchess of Se*rent to make the sale "in order to assist my uncle, his faithful servitors, and myself in our common dis- tress." The diamonds were deposited with the Danish Consul, who advanced two hundred thou- sand ducats on the price of the sale.
February 23, Louis XVIII. and his niece, fol- lowed by their fugitive little court, left Memel for Koenigsberg, where they arrived the next day.
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There they learned that the King of Prussia con- sented to assign them a residence in Warsaw, but under the express conditions that the Pretender's suite should be still further reduced, and that he should not assume the royal title, but simply bear the name of the Count of Lille. The Duchess of Angouleme had written a touching letter to the Queen of Prussia, in which she said, speaking of her uncle: "There is more than one voice that cries to me from heaven that he is all for me, that he takes the place of all I have lost, and that I ought never to abandon him. Therefore I will be faithful to him, and death alone shall separate us."
The fugitives took up their route for Warsaw, February 27. While on the way, March 2, Louis XVIII. 's carriage was overset in a ditch while trying to get out of the way of that of a Polish lady whom they met. The shock was violent, and the Duchess of Angouleme, in falling, broke one of the carriage windows by striking her head against it. On March 6 they reached Warsaw and took up their abode in the Vassiliovitch house, situated in the Cracow faubourg.
The Pretender's cause seemed compromised more and more. The treaty of LuneVille had discouraged the royalists. Condd's army, reduced to four or five thousand men, was disbanded in Croatia, near the Adriatic, about twenty leagues from the Turkish frontiers. "We were very far from our country," says the Count of Puymaigre, " when we were forced
258 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
to lay down our arms and abandon all illusions concerning the result of that great struggle between France and Europe which, with such different vicis- situdes, had lasted for nine years. We had learned to comprehend, through long and cruel experience, how greatly the French Princes erred when they set up their standards in foreign lands ; and although it cannot be denied that we had fought with a cer- tain glory, and that the republicans, whose opinions on this head cannot be rejected, have rendered us entire justice, still it was a barren glory."
The Duke of Angouleme, who had distinguished himself in Condi's army, rejoined his wife at War- saw, March 25, 1801. A few days later, it became known that the Emperor Paul I. had been assassin- ated in the night of March 23-24. The new Czar, Alexander I., showed sympathy for Louis XVIII., and granted him subsidies. He even proposed his return to Mittau. The Pretender preferred to remain for the moment at Warsaw. His position there, however, was becoming difficult on account of the amicable relations then existing between the Cabinet of Berlin and the First Consul. The latter, intoxicated by his victories, thought he could induce Louis XVIII. to renounce his claims to the throne of France in consideration of some pecuniary or ter- ritorial indemnity. In accord with the Prussian government, he caused him to be sounded on the subject by M. Meyer, president of the regency of Warsaw. The Pretender, having the Duchess of
THE SOJOURN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 259
Angouleme on his right, received the Prussian negotiator with a truly royal pride. He gave his response in a note concerning which Chateaubriand has said : " This note is one of the finest documents of our history. While powerful monarchs were being forced to abandon their thrones to the con- queror, a proscribed King of France refused his to the usurper who occupied it; the Roman Senate did not make a more magnanimous act of ownership in selling the field where Hannibal was encamped."
The declaration of Louis XVIII. was worded thus : " Warsaw, February 22, 1803. I do not con- found M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded him; I esteem his valor and his military talents; I thank him for many administrative acts, because the benefits conferred on my people are always dear to me. But he deceives himself if he thinks he can induce me to compromise my rights; far from that ; he would establish them himself, if they could be litigated, by the application he is making at this moment. I do not know what are the designs of God concerning my race and me; but I do know the obligations He has imposed on me by the rank in which it pleased Him to give me birth. A Christian, I shall fulfil these obligations until my latest breath; a son of Saint Louis, his example will teach me how to make myself respected even in chains; a successor of Fran9ois I., I shall at least be able to say like him : We have lost all except honor. Signed: Louis." At the foot of this declaration
260 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
the Duke of Angouleme wrote: "With the permis- sion of the King, my uncle, I adhere with all my heart and soul to the contents of this note. Signed : Louis ANTOINE."
The Count of Artois, the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Orleans and his two brothers, the Prince of Conde* and the Duke of Bourbon, all exiled in England, sent Louis XVIII. the following adhe- sion, dated at Wansted House, April 23, 1803: "We the undersigned Princes, brother, nephews, and cousins of His Majesty Louis XVIII., King of France and Navarre, penetrated with the same sen- timents with which our sovereign Lord and King shows himself so gloriously animated in his noble response to the proposition made him to renounce the throne of France, and to require from all the princes of his house a renunciation of their impre- scriptible rights of succession to the same throne, declare :
" That our attachment to our duties and our honor not permitting us to compromise our rights, we adhere with heart and soul to the response of our King;
" That after his illustrious example, we will never lend ourselves to the slightest transaction which could abase the House of Bourbon and cause it to fail in what it owes to itself, its ancestors, and its descendants ;
" And that if the unjust employment of superior force should succeed (which may God avert!) in
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placing in fact, but never by right, on the throne of France any other than our legitimate King, we will follow with as much confidence as fidelity the voice of honor which bids us appeal from it to God, to the French people, and to our swords."
Bonaparte's future victim, the young Duke of Enghien, also sent in his adhesion, couched in these words: "Sire, the letter of March 5 with which Your Majesty has deigned to honor me, has duly arrived. Your Majesty knows too well the blood which flows in my veins to have been able to doubt for a moment concerning the nature of the response you ask for. I am a Frenchman, Sire, and a French- man remains faithful to his God, his King, and his honorable oaths. Many others will perhaps some day envy me this triple advantage. Deign then, Your Majesty, to permit me to add my signature to that of the Duke of Angouleme, adhering like him with all my heart and soul to the contents of the note of my King. Signed: Louis ANTOINE HENRI DE BOURBON. Ettenheim, March 22, 1803."
Enthusiastic over this language, Chateaubriand exclaims : " What sentiments ! what a signature ! and what a date! When one reads at this epoch the history of the old France and the new, which existed at the same time, one knows not which to be the more proud of; heroic successes attend the new France, heroic adversities the old. Our princes carried away all the grandeurs of our country; they left nothing but victory behind them."
262 TUE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
It was at Ettenheim, on March 25, 1803, that the Duke of Enghien signed his adhesion to the declara- tion of Louis XVIII., and it was at Ettenheim, less than a year later, on March 15, 1804, that he was arrested by Colonel Ordener's dragoons to be taken to the castle of Vincennes and shot there, contrary to every regulation of the rights of nations, on the fatal night of March 20-21. As soon as she had been apprised of the murder, the Duchess of Angou- leme wrote to the Prince of Conde*, the victim's grandfather, a letter in which she said: "Monsieur my Cousin, I cannot forbear to express my keen sympathy in the sorrow which afflicts you, and which I cordially and sincerely share. In spite of all I have suffered, I could never have imagined the frightful event which plunges us into mourning. ... I am not writing to the Duke of Bourbon, but I pray you, be the interpreter of my sentiments ; rely, I entreat you, on my prayers that, sustained by your courage, your health may bear up under the sorrowful weight of our mutual and cruel loss."
The Duke of Enghien's murder had proved how greatly Bonaparte feared the Bourbons, in spite of his immense power. One might fancy he already foreboded the events of 1814 and 1815. The Pre- tender had written him, September 7, 1800: "You must know, General, that you have long since gained my esteem. If you doubt my gratitude, designate your place, determine the lot of your friends. As to my principles, I am a Frenchman,
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clement by character; I would be still more so by reason. The victor of Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcole, the conqueror of Italy and Egypt, must prefer glory to a vain celebrity. However, you are losing pre- cious time ; we can assure the welfare of France ; I say ive, because for that I have need of Bonaparte, and he can do nothing without me. General, Eu- rope has its eyes upon you; a glorious triumph awaits you, and I am impatient to give peace to my people. Signed: Louis."
The First Consul replied : " I have received your letter, Monsieur, and I thank you for the flattering things it contains. You should not desire to return to France, for to do so you would have to walk over a hundred thousand corpses. Sacrifice your per- sonal interests to the repose of your country; his- tory will recompense you for it. I am not insensible to the sorrows of your family, and it would give me pleasure to know that you were surrounded with all that could contribute to the tranquillity of your retreat."
Though Bonaparte might address the descendant of Saint Louis, Henri IV., and Louis XIV. simply as "Monsieur," and adopt a tone of disdainful pro- tection toward him, yet he was tormented by the existence of this discrowned monarch and dreaded the future reserved for this outlawed exile.
The more improbable the chances of a restoration became, the greater became the lofty arrogance of the Pretender's language and the more firmly did he
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proclaim his confidence in divine right. Learning that Bonaparte had received the Order of the Golden Fleece from the King of Spain a few days after the murder of the Duke of Enghien, he hastened to despoil himself of this order and send it back to Charles IV. with the following letter: "Monsieur my Brother, it is with regret that I return to you the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which His Majesty your father, of glorious memory, confided to me. There can be nothing in common between me and the great criminal whom audacity and fortune have placed upon my throne, which he has sullied with the blood of a Bourbon ! Religion may bind me to pardon an assassin, but the tyrant of my people must always be my enemy. In this century it is more glorious to merit a sceptre than to wield it. The mysterious decrees of Providence may condemn me to end my days in exile; but neither posterity nor my contemporaries shall have the right to say that in adversity I showed myself for an instant unworthy to occupy the throne of my ancestors. "
Nothing discouraged Louis XVIII. ; neither the adhesion of nearly the whole French episcopate to the new reign, nor the plebiscite raising the Emperor to the throne, nor the Pope's consecration of his crown. He protested against the Empire by an act dated at Warsaw, June 5, 1804, which was expressed in these words: "In taking the title of Emperor and proposing to make it hereditary in his
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family, Bonaparte has just set the seal upon his usur- pation. This new act of a revolution in which all has been invalid from the beginning, cannot possibly annul my rights; but, responsible for my conduct to all sovereigns, whose rights are not less infringed than mine, and whose thrones are shaken by the principles which the Senate of Paris has dared to advance; responsible to France, to my family, and to honor, I should think I was betraying the com- mon cause if I kept silence on this occasion. I declare, then, in presence of the sovereigns, that far from recognizing the imperial title which Bonaparte has just caused to be conferred upon him by a body which has not even a legal existence, I protest against this title and against the subsequent acts to which it may give rise."
The Duchess of Angouleme, with whom the idea of royalty by divine right was a religion, rejoiced in this haughty attitude on her uncle's part. She would not herself have written in any other style. It is claimed that Napoleon, impressed by the per- sistency and solemnity with which the Pretender asserted rights mocked at by so many people, said : "The Count of Lille has done well; he would be despised if he yielded without a struggle; a pre- tender ought always to protest; it is the only way of reigning that is left him."
Napoleon exerted such an influence over the Prus- sian government at this time, however, that Louis XVIII. did not find himself at ease in Warsaw.
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He resolved to repair to Grodno, on Russian terri- tory, in order to concert measures with his brother, the Count of Artois, which should give his protesta- tions a more striking character. Just as he was about departing from Warsaw, he learned that an attempt to poison him and his family had been organized. The man who had been tampered with in order to induce him to commit the crime, himself revealed it to the Count of Avaray. The Pretender then wrote a letter to the president of the Prussian Chamber of Warsaw, dated July 24, 1804, which began thus: "I have been informed, monsieur, of an attempt made to assassinate me. If my person alone were in question, I would turn a deaf ear to such warnings; but as the lives of my family and servants are likewise menaced, I should be derelict to the most sacred duties if I slighted this danger. I beg you, therefore, to come this evening and talk it over with me." The Prussian magistrate, evad- ing the inquiry, replied that he would hand the matter over to the police, and the bottom of this underhanded affair was never known.
Instead of going to Grodno, as he had at first intended, Louis XVIII. proceeded toward Sweden and was joined by the Count of Artois at Calmar, October 5, 1804. The two brothers drew up there together the manifesto which was to appear on the subsequent December 2, the day of Napoleon's coro- nation. While the Pretender was at Calmar he received, through the intermediation of the Prussian
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Minister in Sweden, an official note from the Prus- sian government interdicting him from returning to Warsaw. He then asked the Emperor Alexander's permission to reside in Mittau, and it was granted. The Count of Artois returned to England. Louis XVIII. embarked at Calmar, landed at Riga, and went to Mittau, where his wife and his niece did not rejoin him until spring.
XII
THE SECOND SOJOUEN AT MITTAU
AT Warsaw the Duchess of Angouleme was surrounded by unanimous sympathies. It pleased her to be in the midst of a Catholic popula- tion with whom she had sentiments and ideas in com- mon. One of the Kings of France, Henri III., had been King of Poland, and the Princess was descended from Marie Leczinska, the daughter of a Polish sovereign. These souvenirs aided the prestige of the daughter of Louis XVI. ; and the Polish nobil- ity, who speak French as well as they do their native tongue, paid her the most delicate and respect- ful attentions. The Princess did not leave without regret a land which reminded her of France, for the Poles have been called the Frenchmen of the north, and she returned with apprehension to Mittau, whence she had been driven out four years before under such painful circumstances.
At Mittau the Duchess of Angouleme once more installed herself with her husband, her uncle, and her aunt in the former palace of the Dukes of Cour- land. In 1805 two fires broke out there. The guilty persons were not discovered, but the author-
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THE SECOND SOJOURN AT MITTAU 269
ities declared that the fires had been intentionally kindled. This affair remained mysterious, like that of the attempted poisoning of the royal family at Warsaw.
Meanwhile, the echo of the noise of arms pene- trated even to the asylum of Louis XVIII. and his niece. A bloody war desolated the country lying between the Vistula and the Niemen. The terrible battle of Eylau was fought February 7, 1807. The military convoys of wounded Frenchmen or pris- oners were forwarded to Mittau. Although a con- tagious fever broke out among them, the Abbe* Edgeworth of Firmont went to their assistance. He paid with his life for this devotion ; but he was not abandoned on his deathbed by the daughter of the martyr-king. Braving the contagion, she ex- claimed: "No, I will never forsake him who is more than my friend. Nothing shall prevent me from nursing him myself; I do not ask any one to go with me." And it was she who, on May 22, 1807, received the venerable priest's last sigh.
Louis XVIII. wrote to the Abbe"s brother: "The letter of the Archbishop of Rheims will inform you of the painful loss we have just endured. You will regret the best and tenderest of brothers. I lament a friend, a benefactor, who conducted a martyr-king to the gates of heaven, and who has taught me the way thither. The world was not worthy to possess him long. Let us submit, reminding ourselves that he has received the reward of his virtues. But we
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are not forbidden to accept consolations of an inferior order, and I offer them to you in the general afflic- tion which this grief has occasioned. Yes, mon- sieur, the death of your worthy brother has been a public calamity. My family, and all the loyal Frenchmen who surround me, seem, like me, to have lost a father. The people of Mittau of every class and creed have shared our sorrow. May this recital lighten your regrets! May I thus give to the memory of the most worthy of men a new proof of veneration and attachment! "
Eight days after the Abbe* Edgeworth's death, the Emperor Alexander arrived at Mittau, May 30, 1807. Before rejoining his army, then in camp on the banks of the Pregel, and about to renew the struggle against Napoleon, the Czar desired to pay a visit to his guests. He was very affable to the Pretender and particularly courteous to the wife of that Prince and the Duchess of Angouleme. He already promised a Bourbon restoration with the aid of Russia, but lie was not to keep his promise until seven years later. Before its realization he passed through a period when, like his father, Paul I., he felt a momentary enthusiasm for the victor of Austerlitz, Eylau, and Friedland.
After the treaty of Tilsit, signed July 7, 1807, one would have said that Russia was forever recon- ciled with imperial France. Louis XVIII. was not slow to see that under such circumstances his pres- ence at Mittau was no longer reconcilable with his
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dignity. Nevertheless, he took great care not to embroil himself with the Emperor Alexander. On his side, the Czar avoided the rude measures taken by Paul I. in 1801. He did not banish Louis XVIII. from Russia, and it was of his own free will that the Prince repaired to England, where he not unreasonably thought that his sojourn would be more useful to his cause.
Leaving his wife and niece at Mittau, Louis XVIII. left that city with the Duke of Angouleme, and embarked at Riga for Sweden in October, 1807. King Gustavus IV. gave him an excellent reception and placed the Swedish frigate Frega at his disposal and under his orders. He sailed in it to England in November. His wife and the Duchess of Angou- leme remained at Mittau until July, 1808, when, quitting Russia forever, they took ship in the port of Liban. After a pleasant voyage they landed on English shores and went to rejoin Louis XVIII. , who was then the guest of the Marquis of Bucking- ham, at Gosfield Hall, in Essex.
XIII
HARTWELL
LOUIS XVIII. had been summoned to England neither by the court nor the government. The Cabinet of London was weary of the intrigues of the French Smigrts and of the always useless succors given them, and feared to make any pledges to the Bourbon cause except those prompted by England's interests and continental policy. Warned that the Pretender was bound for England, it wanted to relegate him to Scotland, and it sent orders to every port which he might possibly enter, desiring him to sail at once for Leith, whence he might go to Edinburgh, where an asylum would be arranged for him in the ancient castle of Holyrood. On landing at Yarmouth, Louis XVIII. received this official injunction. He refused to comply with it, and after having declared that he would return to meet all the exiles of the continent rather than consent to the prescribed sojourn at Holyrood, he claimed the simple rights of a citizen on the free soil of England. The Marquis of Buckingham offered, and induced him to accept, magnificent hospitality in his splendid castle of Gosfield Hall, 272
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in Essex, near the borders of Norfolkshire. Louis XVIII. was rejoined there, in the spring of 1808, by his wife and the Duchess of Angouleme. Desiring to thank their host for his generous reception, the exiles built a small temple dedicated to gratitude in the park of Gosfield Hall. Five oaks were to over- shadow it. The first was planted by Louis XVIII., the second by his wife, the third by his niece, and the fourth and fifth by his nephews the Dukes of Angouleme and Berry.
In April, 1809, the Pretender, wishing to be nearer London and to have a dwelling of his own, went to the modest manor of Hartwell, which he first hired and afterwards bought from Sir George Lee. This domain, which was more like a farm than a manor-house, and which was about sixteen leagues from London, was vast in its proportions, but miserable in appearance. In order to contain more persons, nearly every room had been divided into compartments. The offices were detached build- ings surrounded by gardens. Some of these con- structions contained very narrow huts for the servants. Taken all together, they looked like a village. The room that Louis XVIII. occupied most frequently was almost as small as a ship's cabin. It was ornamented with portraits of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth, and Louis XVII. Before dinner the Prince's guests assembled in a large drawing-room where there was a billiard table. In going to the dining-room,
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Louis XVIII. always went first. The repast was simple, and not many dishes were served. The Pretender did the honors with much affability and grace. After dinner they returned to the drawing-room for coffee, conversation, and whist. Every time that Louis XVIII. entered or went out, the Duchess of Angouleme dropped him a profound courtesy; he responded by a bow and kissing her hand. Visitors were surprised at the number of persons lodged at the King's expense in the house and its dependencies. It was like a rising colony.
"Louis XVIII.," the Baron of Vitrolles has said in his Memoirs, "displayed immovable courage in enduring his long exile ; he was sustained by a true sentiment of dignity, his faith in his rights, and confidence in his future. In his retreat at Hartwell he was at peace with himself in the midst of a very narrow social circle, but one in which he exercised every sort of superiority; he preferred that of wit. He lived like a great nobleman on his estates, sur- rounded by a numerous family. Political interests and events were seldom spoken of. Historical facts and dates, French, Italian, and English literature, formed the subject of the evening conversations at which all the inhabitants of the castle came together. The Countess of Narbonne, afterwards duchess, dis- played there the graces of her mind and her pure and elegant diction. She was the object of the King's preference and attention."
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As a consolation in his exile and an affirmation of his rights, the Pretender kept up an appearance of royalty at Hartwell. Near his phantom of a throne stood captains of the guard, the Dukes of Gramont and of Havre"; and first gentlemen of the bedchamber, the Dukes of Fleury and of Aumont. When he went to London and was present at divine service in the tiny chapel of Little George Street, erected at the cost of the French Emigres, he occu- pied an armchair which resembled a throne. Behind this armchair was the princes' bench, where the Duchess of Angouleme, the Count of Artois, the Duke of Angouleme, the Duke of Berry, the Prince of Conde*, and the Duke of Bourbon seated them- selves. Moreover, there were benches for those French bishops who, refusing to acknowledge the Concordat, had denied the Pope's right to dispose of their sees without their consent. Among them were Mgrs. Lamarche, Dillon, Flamarens, Argentre*, Bethisy, Amelot, Villedieu, Laurentie, Belboeuf, and Colbert.
The English government had not recognized Louis XVIII. 's royal title, and yet when his wife died, November 13, 1810, they paid her the same honors as to a queen, and she was buried with pomp in Westminster Abbey. On her deathbed the Princess had addressed pious exhortations to her nephews. " As to you, my niece, " she said to the Duchess of Angouleme, " all you need to go to heaven is a pair of wings."
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At this period the most infatuated partisans of Louis XVIII. considered the hope of his return to France as a chimerical dream. Napoleon's marriage with an Austrian Archduchess was thought to have consolidated the imperial dynasty forever. " Bona- parte," says the Baron of Vitrolles in his Memoirs, "had done everything to efface the memory of the royal family. Since his reign began it had been named to him but once, and that was in the ditches of Vincennes. The generation which knew our principles had disappeared; that which was coming up scarcely knew that Louis XVI. had brothers ; the orphan of the Temple was an historic personage for them, and they only learned by the Duke of En- ghien's murder that there were still Conde's. We ourselves, who in our youth had fought under their flags and for their noble cause, were dispersed, without ties or union, if not without souvenirs. Many were connected with the tyrant; the bravest in the army, the neediest in the excise, the most obsequious at court. Those who still retained some trace of their early sentiments in their hearts were in private and straitened circumstances, without influence and with no hope of bettering their condi- tion. In ten years we had barely heard these princes whom we held in veneration mentioned more than two or three times. The vague and often lying news we obtained of them was transmitted orally, and so to say by infiltration, without our knowing whence it came. We were told that the
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Duchess of Angouleme had given birth to a son, and that the Prince Regent of England had been the godfather of the royal infant. At other times we would hear of one of our princes appearing upon some field of battle and fighting against the usurper for the rights of his house. We still commemorated January 21 at the church and the feast of Saint Louis at table, and these vivid emotions revealed to us that at the bottom of our hearts lay ineffaceable sentiments and passions unperceived in the ordinary course of our lives. Parties die when they are built purely upon interest; they live like religions when they are founded upon beliefs."
Napoleon, the father of the King of Rome, had reached the summit of his power. His court almanac resembled that of the court of Versailles ; there were the same offices, the same names, the same titles, the same etiquette. The most prominent £migr£s, the most notable persons of the old regime, served in the household of the new Charlemagne and in that of his wife, the daughter of the German Csesars. But while discharging their functions in the palace of the Tuileries and other imperial residences, these great lords and ladies thought involuntarily of the orphan of the Temple. Even when they forgot the others, they remembered this heroine of sorrow. As Lamartine has said, Louis XVIII. loved the Duch- ess of Angouleme through sentiment and through policy also. " He protected himself in the eyes of all Europe through this beauty, youth, and piety. He
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called her his Antigone. He pictured himself, lean- ing on the arm of this niece, as royaltjr protected from on high by an angel of grief. She lived with him at Hartwell, reminding herself of France with bitterness, but of the throne and the country with the pride and majesty innate in her blood." The daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette was the ornament, the poetry, the consecration, of the little court of the exiled King. If Louis XVIII. had experienced a momentary weakness, a glance at his niece would have sufficed to renew his faith and hope.
It is certain that Marie Louise, with her double crown as Empress of the French and Queen of Italy, was not more majestic on her throne than the orphan of the Temple in her exile.
Although it was her custom to avoid parties and entertainments, the Duchess of Angouleme could not refuse to appear at the English court in 1811. The Baron of Ge'ramb, who quitted court-life for the cloister some years later, and became a Carthusian monk, thus expressed himself concerning the young Princess: "For the first time Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Angouleme appeared in London at a public assembly. Shall I say that all eyes were instantly fixed upon her ? No ; for yielding entirely to my own observations and the vivid emotions which contended in my heart, I could not notice those of others. Never did virtue and innocence display themselves to mankind in traits where a
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beauty so touching blended with so profound a mel- ancholy. I dare not describe all that there is of enchanting and affecting in her glance, all that is celestial in her smile ; I should fear to profane what I had seen in seeking to portray it."
And the Austrian chamberlain, who assuredly would not have spoken with such enthusiasm of Marie Louise, the daughter of his Emperor, contin- ues in a truly lyrical transport: "In contemplating these features which, they say, recall the goodness of Louis XVI. and the dignity of Marie Antoinette, these were the longings that escaped with my sighs from my burdened heart : O sweet and tender dove ! May storms respect forever the shelter where thou dost repose ! May new sorrows never come to afflict this young heart which grief has moulded. Alas! thou hast known naught of life except its sufferings and afflictions. If, in the midst of catastrophes thou hast been spared, if the rage of those who assassinated the beings so dear was not expended upon thee, if thou hast come out pure as the angels from that land where license and crime held sway, what destiny does Providence reserve for thee? Rescued from shipwreck amid the most horrible tempests, art thou the token which God will one day offer men to show them that His anger is appeased, and that the world, crushed under so many ruins, at last may breathe again? Will the feeble hand of a woman lift up anew some day the social edifice that has been drenched in blood?" If for-
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eigners spoke in such terms of the daughter of Louis XVI., one can readily imagine what the veneration of the French royalists must have been. In their eyes, the saintly Princess was the living symbol of the twin religions of the throne and the altar.
The Duchess of Angoul^me, who was her hus- band's only love, occupied herself at Hartwell chiefly with works of charity. She meditated, read, and prayed. Her private household was composed of the Countess of Choisy, now become the Vis- countess of Argout; Count Etienne, now the Duke of Damas, and his duchess, the sister of Madame de Narbonne. She often received visits from the Count of Artois and the Duke of Berry, who lived in London. After the death of Madame de Polastron, for whom he had felt the longest and tenderest affection of his life, the Count of Artois had become profoundly devout, and his religious sentiments were thenceforward in harmony with those of the daughter of Louis XVI. As to the Duke of Berry, who loved the world and the arts, he led a stormy life. A beautiful Englishwoman had captivated his imagination and his heart. He should have had the emotions of war; those of love consoled him. The Duchess of Angoul^me fre- quently saw the Prince of Cond£ also, for whom she displayed great sympathy, and to whom Louis XVIII. wrote: "Enjoy, my dear cousin, the same repose which the most illustrious of your ancestors voluntarily tasted under the laurels ; all will become
HAETWELL 281
Chantilly to you." On his part, the Prince of Conde* had addressed to the Duke of Berry, his former subordinate, a letter in which he said: "Doubtless our life is distressing; but we have done our duty. In existing circumstances it is for you, not for me, to raise the royal standard, and for us all to march under your orders. Your extreme youth may for a time have necessitated the incon- venience of your being under mine, but so long as a little strength remains to me, I shall glory in being your first grenadier."
In speaking of the princes, nobles, and bishops who came to salute Louis XVIII., M. de Vitrolles has said: "The homage of these elders of France formed for the King, on ceremonious occasions, if not a court, at least a circle sufficiently numerous to hide from him the emptiness that lay behind them. He bore in his royal nature the dignified sentiments and the whole majesty of his race. Nobility of thought was as natural to him as that of the blood flowing in his veins, and whenever he had to take a determination he rose to the height of all the kings he represented. In the customs of his exiled life he was fond of the r61e and the appearance of royalty." To have a favorite seemed to him a monarchical tradition. At Hartwell he had two; at first the Count of Avaray, and afterwards the Count of Blacas. "The Count of Avaray," adds M. de Vitrolles, " had been the most intimate ; there is no ancient friendship either real or fabulous, in prose
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or in verse, that lias not been called on to celebrate this attachment. Castor and Pollux, Achilles and Patroclus, Nisus and Euryalus, Augustus and Cinna, Henri IV. and Sully, etc. The King had given the title of duke to M. d'Avaray as soon as he succeeded to the right to the throne, and the father inherited his son's title as soon as the royalty became real. But Avhat was it to be the favorite of a King in exile? He was everything; he freed his master from the important cares of his empire; he ruled the house, the servants, the kitchens, and interposed himself between the King and the princes of his family so as to keep them at a distance. . . .
"Having been attacked by a lung complaint, M. d'Avaray travelled in Italy in search of health. At Florence he met M. de Blacas, who was of a very ancient family of Provence, long since fallen into that decline of fortune which tarnishes the lustre of the greatest names. An exiled, poverty-stricken sub-lieutenant, he was living in the humblest wuy at Florence when M. d'Avaray employed him to assist in his correspondence. In other circumstances this would have meant a secretaryship, but it was quite another thing in those of the emigration. Having been brought to England and presented to the King by his new patron, M. de Blacas made himself useful and agreeable, and when the progress of M. d'Avaray's malady led him to seek the island of Madeira, celebrated for its cures of such diseases, he left his protege* with the King to conduct their correspondence. "
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M. d'Avaray died in Madeira, June 3, 1811. A few days previous, Louis XVIII. wrote: "Provi- dence could not take from me more than it gave when it granted me such a friend as my dear d'Avaray." Besides the title of duke, the King had conferred on his favorite the right to put the escutcheon of France in his arms with this device : Vicit iter durum pietas.
The succession as official favorite devolved upon M. de Blacas. Lamartine represents him as pos- sessing "the unlimited affection of his master, and meriting it only by his honor and fidelity; he was inwardly humble, but haughty in appearance, re- garded the King as all and France as nothing, was unyielding through rigidity of character, and carried all the arrogance and pride of the old absolute courts into an obscure exile and a reign of compromises."
M. de Blacas excited great jealousy, moreover, among those who surrounded Louis XVIII. M. de Vitrolles says : " War was declared against the new favorite. To praise the old one was not enough; no occasion was let slip to disgust this one, and to display scorn and contemptuous airs and, in a word, that kind of insults which are resented the more because it is impossible to describe and complain of them since they are so unsubstantial. But in so doing they merely played into the hand of him they wanted to ruin. The King was stubborn in this war of ill manners; all his force of character was brought out by it. If the attacks had come from
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without, he would readily have abandoned the object of them; but against his own party he defended him as if he had said to himself, unguibus et rostra. Whenever an insult was offered his favorite he answered it by a new evidence of favor. 'I will make him so great that they will not dare to attack him again,' said he when he appointed M. de Blacas grand-master of the wardrobe. What confidence he must have had in his royalty to think that he was doing something in appointing a grand officer of his household at Hart well! "
At the time when Louis XVIII. thus continued to play with imperturbable dignity his r61e of sover- eign in partibus infidelium, or, better, fidelium, a Bourbon restoration was hardly considered possible by any one except himself and the Duchess of Angouleme. As M. de Viel-Castel says in his remarkable history of the Restoration, "military expeditions, political intrigues, conspiracies, sur- prises, had all alike failed. The ill-success of so many enterprises from which so much had been expected, the punishment of some of their authors, the apparent impossibility of shaking that colossus of imperial power before which the whole continent trembled, had long obliged the Bourbons to avoid any manifestation of their claims. The royalist agency which had secretly existed at Paris had been broken up. The protest published by Louis XVIII. in 1804, at the time when Napoleon put on the im- perial diadem, was the last sign of life he had given to his adherents."
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Until the Russian campaign, royalty was in a somnolent state at Hartwell. The Pretender sel- dom spoke of politics, but he awaited with vague confidence some unforeseen event or other which would bring about a thorough change. Unfortu- nately, these events were to prove the most fright- ful of catastrophes. The wretched thing about the royalist cause is that it was weakened by the vic- tories and strengthened by the defeats of France. The hopes of royalty seemed extinguished after Wagrain. They rekindled with the burning of Moscow. Louis XVIII., who read the French jour- nals diligently, and discerned the symptoms of ruin and disaffection under the adulations of a press sold to the imperial police, understood that the retreat from Russia had given the Empire a mortal blow, and that the Restoration was thenceforward only a matter of time. At once he conceived the idea of recalling himself by an opportune and skilful meas- ure to the memory of France and Europe which seemed to have forgotten him; he wrote to the Emperor Alexander on behalf of the French princes. "The fate of arms," said he in his letter, "has caused more than one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, most of whom are Frenchmen, to fall into your hands. No matter what flag they served; they are unfortunate, and I see in them only my children ; I recommend them to Your Imperial Majesty. Deign to consider how much many of them have already suffered, and ameliorate the severities of their lot!
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Let them learn that the victor is their father's friend! Your Majesty cannot give me a more affect- ing proof of your sentiments toward me." The Czar did not even reply to the Pretender.
Alexander's silence did not discourage Louis XVIII., who published another manifesto, February 1, 1813. He proved by this adroit and liberal docu- ment that time, exile, and the lessons of experience had caused him to make some useful reflections. He promised to maintain the administrative and judiciary bodies in the plenitude of their powers, to leave all functionaries in their employments, to forbid all prosecutions for things accomplished in an unhappy past whose oblivion would be sealed by his return, and he invited the imperial Senate, which he lauded, to make itself the chief instrument of the Restoration.
After the battle of Leipsic the Pretender thought that the speedy success of his cause was certain. Thus, as Lamartine has said, the re-establishment of a Bourbon on the throne of France seemed to him a duty on the part of God Himself; and the hour which he and the orphan of the Temple awaited as a justification of Providence was at last about to strike.
XIV
THE END OF THE EXILE
AT the beginning of 1814, Louis XVIII. was convinced that his return to France was imminent; and yet the European Powers had not yet promised him their support. Not having aban- doned the idea of treating with Napoleon, they feared to increase the difficulties of the contest by linking their cause to that of a family having numerous adversaries in France. The Emperor Alexander, jealous perhaps of the antiquity of the Bourbon race, showed little sympathy for them, and was reputed to favor Bernadotte as sovereign of the French people. The Austrian Emperor seemed unconcerned about Louis XVIII., and his coldness was attributed to a lingering interest in the fate of his daughter, Marie Louise. Although the whole outlook seemed discouraging, the Count of Artois and his two sons, the Duke of Angouleme and the Duke of Berry, decided to leave England for the purpose of taking part in approaching events. The Count of Artois wanted to throw himself into the midst of the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian armies which were attacking France in the north and east.
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The Duke of Angoulenie wanted to go to Spain, where an English and Spanish army was advancing toward the South of France. The Duke of Berry proposed to go to the island of Jersey, near the departments of Normandy, where the conscription had just occasioned some troubles thought likely to prelude an insurrection.
The three princes embarked on English vessels in January, 1814. The Count of Artois landed in Holland, and it was not until he had wandered for more than a month in that country, Germany, and Switzerland, that the Allies gave him permission to set foot on French territory. The Duke of Angou- l(3me was able to reach Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which was held by English troops, and on February 2, he issued a proclamation there in which he invited the French army commanded by Marshal Soult to aid in the overthrow of Napoleon. The marshal, who was to display such royalist sentiments some weeks later on, replied to this attempted corruption of his troops by a proclamation in which he said : " Soldiers, they have had the infamy to persuade you to violate your oaths to the Emperor. This offence can only be avenged in blood. To arms ! . . . Let us devote to opprobrium and public execration every Frenchman who would favor the insidious projects of our ene- mies. Let us fight to the end against the enemies of our august Emperor and our country. Hatred to traitors! War to the death against those who at- tempt to divide us ! Let us contemplate the prodi-
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gious efforts of our great Emperor and his signal victories, and die with arms in our hands rather than outlive our honor ! "
As to the Duke of Berry, he landed in the island of Jersey. He had been told that he would have but to fall upon the coast of Normandy in order to be surrounded at once by a royalist army. But he soon perceived that this was a delusion, and re- mained in Jersey until the consummation of the events about to take place. It was from there he wrote the folloAving letter, quoted by Chateaubri- and: "Here I am like Tantalus, in sight of this unhappy France which has such difficult) in break- ing its chains ; and winds, bad weather, and the tide all come to arrest the courageous efforts of the heroes who are going to risk the dangers which I am not yet allowed to share. You, whose soul is so beautiful, so French, understand all that I expe- rience, all that it costs me to remain away from those shores which I could reach in two hours! When the sun lights them up I climb to the highest rocks and, with my glass in my hand, I follow the whole coast, I see the rocks of Coutances. My imagination becomes excited; I see myself spring- ing ashore, surrounded by Frenchmen with white cockades in their hats; I hear the cry, 'Long live the King ! ' that cry which no Frenchman ever hears unmoved; the most beautiful woman in the prov- ince wreathes a white scarf about me, for love and glory always go together. We march on Cher-
290 TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL&ME
bourg; some wretched fort, garrisoned by foreigners, tries to defend itself; we carry it by storm, and a vessel goes to seek the King with the white standard which recalls the glorious and happy days of France. Ah! madame, when one is but a few hours from the accomplishment of so probable a dream, could he think of going further away?"
However, the French royalists made no move as yet. "We had often grieved," says M. de Vitrolles, "at not having the least communication from our princes. We were ready to accuse them of aban- doning their cause at the moment when they might have set up their flag anew. But one of those Eng- lish journals so strictly prohibited reached us one day through the intermediation of the Archbishop of Malines ; it apprised us that Monsieur, the Count of Artois, had embarked for the continent, January 25; and that, about the same time, the Duke of Angouleme had also left England for the south of France, there to offer himself generously to his friends and enemies. This news, entirely over- looked by the majority, and hardly noticed by those who saw it, was for us a flash of light and fire. It enlivened our hopes and revived our purposes. I decided on the spot to go in search of Monsieur wherever he might be."
Before rejoining the Count of Artois, M. de Vitrolles went to the headquarters of the Allies and had interviews with Prince Metternich and the Emperor Alexander which were not very encourag-
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ing for the Bourbon cause. The Czar said to him: "The proof of attachment you give to your former masters is certainly laudable ; it conies from a senti- ment of honor and loyalty which I appreciate, but the obstacles which henceforward separate the princes of the House of Bourbon from the throne of France seem to me insurmountable. . . . They would come back embittered by misfortune, and even though generous sentiments or wise policy should oblige them to sacrifice their resentments, they would not be strong enough to pacify those who have suffered for them and by them. The spirit of the army, that army so powerful in France, would be opposed to them ; the impulse of the new genera- tions would be against them."
The Emperor Alexander then enumerated several combinations which had occurred to the minds of the Allies concerning the fate of France. "We have studied much," said he, "about what might suit France if Napoleon should disappear. For some time we considered Bernadotte; his influence over the army, and the favor with which he must be regarded by the friends of the Revolution, fixed our thoughts on him for some time ; but afterwards vari- ous motives made us put him aside. Eugene Beau- harnais has been spoken of;, he is esteemed by France, cherished by the army, and sprung from the ranks of the nobility ; would he not have many par- tisans? After all, might not a wisely organized Republic be more congenial to the French mind?
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It is not with impunity that ideas of liberty have germinated long in such a country as yours. They make the establishment of a more concentrated power very difficult."
After recalling the Czar's language, M. de Vi- trolles adds : " Where were we, great God ! on the 17th of March ? The Emperor Alexander, the King of the kings united for the safety of the world, talk- ing to me of the Republic ! . . . I disguised toler- ably well the astonishment I felt at these last words, and was sufficiently master of myself to answer the Emperor without allowing any alteration in my voice to betray my emotion. I had not associated enough with kings to anticipate such an allocution. I thought it was I who should plead, and that they would re- spond by some great and noble words, and by senti- ments as noble as the dignity of my interlocutors presupposed. But not at all ; they at once engaged me in a hand-to-hand contest, raining on me the closest, strongest, and completest reasons ; in fact, all and the only ones that could be objected to me."
Even after the rupture of the Congress of Chatil- lon the Powers did not yet pronounce for the royal- ist cause. The Russian generals had ended by authorizing the Count of Artois to come to Nancy, but without cockade, decoration, or political title, as a simple traveller. "It must be owned," says M. de Vitrolles again, "that until then his hopes had received no encouragement. The regions where Monsieur sought to exert his influence were occu-
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pied by foreign armies ; the wishes of the entire population were for a speed}'- pacification, and the re-establishment of the Bourbons seemed rather a question which would prolong the war. They saw no escape from so many evils save a peace with Bonaparte. On the other hand, the overtures made to the allied sovereigns had been always and utterly repelled, and yet Monsieur's claims had been ex- ceedingly small ; he merely solicited permission to rejoin the army and fight as a simple volunteer. At the time of my arrival at Nancy he was pro- foundly discouraged. I brought a kingdom; they felt it; but they did not so quickly comprehend it. Monsieur still gave precedence to his request to join the army ; all that I announced to him, all the most elevated subjects of our interviews, did not avail to change his notion, and the letters he gave me, on my departure, for the Emperors of Russia and Austria still gave the first rank to this request to take part in active army service. He has one of those minds that are sluggish to move."
At the very time when the Count of Artois seemed discouraged at Nancy, an event occurred at Bordeaux which revived all royalist hopes. The mayor was a count of the Empire, M. de Lynch, whose antecedents did not seem to foreshadow the part he was about to play. Three months before he had laid at the foot of Napoleon's throne the homage of the pretended devotion of the people of Bordeaux, and had said in a more than adulatory address:
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" Napoleon has done everything for the French ; the French will do everything for him." January 29, 1814, on presenting the flags to the National Guard just organized, he promised to give proof of fidelity and devotion to the Emperor in case there should be danger of invasion. Almost at the same time, in concert with M. Taffard of Saint-Germain, who en- titled himself King's commissioner for Guyenne, he sent two secret agents to Lord Wellington entreat- ing him to send a body of English troops to Bor- deaux, saying that if they were accompanied by the Duke of Angouleme they would be certain to find a good reception.
Lord Wellington had at first shown little sym- pathy for the royalist cause. On entering French territory, he had written to his government that the Bourbons were as little known, perhaps less known, to their former subjects than the princes of any other dynasty, and that if it suited the Allies to present a new sovereign to the French nation, it mattered little from what family he was chosen. Lord Wellington began by declining the offer of the two Bordelais envoys. He considered it imprudent to detach an army corps from its base of operations and to embarrass the negotiations of the Congress of Chatillon, the issue of which was still doubtful. He added that he was unwilling to compromise honest people whom the fortunes of war might pos- sibly oblige him to leave exposed to imperial ven- geance. He changed his mind a few days later.
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Having defeated Marshal Soult at the battle of Orthez, he removed his headquarters to Saint-Sever, and concluded that from the strategetical point of view the occupation of a city like Bordeaux would be useful. Hence, on March 7, he detached a body of fifteen thousand men from his army, put them under the orders of General Beresford, and sent them towards Bordeaux, which Marshal Soult's retreat to Toulouse had left unprotected. Without English troops the royalists would not have dared to undertake anything, but with them they thought success was certain. The garrison of the city num- bered only five hundred. At the approach of General Beresford's army corps they withdrew, on March 11. Then the royalists decided that on the follow- ing day they would go to meet the English, and that on entering Bordeaux with them, they would proclaim Louis XVIII. there. This programme was executed. A discharge of cannon having given the city the signal agreed upon, an immense white flag was run up on the steeple of Saint Michel, the highest in all Bordeaux. At the same time the mayor, M. de Lynch, going to meet General Beres- ford, who had arrived at the end of the bridge of the Maye, and pointing toward the white flag flying from the steeple of Saint Michel, said: "General, you will enter a city subject to its legitimate king, Louis XVIII. , the ally of His Britannic Majesty; you will witness the joy of this great city on replac- ing itself under the paternal authority of a Bour- bon."
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General Beresford answered the mayor dryly: " Do what you please ; your internal dissensions do not concern me. I am here simply to protect per- sons and property. I take possession of the city in the name of His Britannic Majesty."
At the same time it was announced that the Duke of AngoulSme would enter the city two hours later. Then there broke out among the royalists an explo- sion of joy that bordered on delirium. When the nephew of Louis XVIII., the husband of the orphan of the Temple, made his appearance, they embraced each other, they fell on their knees. It was, who should touch the dress or the horse of the Prince, who replied to these demonstrations of enthusiasm by saying: "No more war, no more conscription, no more excise laws ! " He went to the cathedral to return thanks to God, thence to the H6tel-de-Ville, and took possession of the province in the name of Louis XVIII. The white flag replaced the tricolor everywhere. In the evening the city was illumi- nated. A proclamation from the mayor was read by torchlight, in which he felicitated the Bordelais on their conduct and thanked the English, Spanish, and Portuguese for having joined together in the south of France, as others had done in the north, "to replace the scourge of nations by a monarch who is the father of the people."
Three days afterward, March 15, 1814, the Duke of Angouleme published a proclamation in which he said: "It is not the Bourbons who have brought
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the Allied Powers upon your territory; they has- tened thither in order to preserve their dominions from new misfortunes. As they are convinced that there is no repose either for their own peoples or for France save in a limited monarchy, they open the way to the throne to the successors of Saint Louis. It is only through your suffrages that the King my uncle aspires to be the restorer of a pater- nal and free government." A deputation went to Hartwell to bear to Louis XVIII. the homage of the Bordelais, and to entreat him to repair to the first French city which had proclaimed his authority.
However, the satisfaction of the Duke of Angou- le^me was not unalloyed. The example of the Bor- delais royalists had, so to say, no imitators. With the exception of the two little towns of Roquefort and Bazas, not a single commune declared for the King. General Beresford had left Bordeaux for the purpose of besieging Bayonne and the fortress of Blaye, the garrison of which, having remained faith- ful to the Emperor, was obstructing the free naviga- tion of the Garonne. The Duke of Angouleme, menaced with a return of the imperial troops, wrote to Lord Wellington asking for men and money. Lord Wellington refused them. " It is contrary to my advice and my way of looking at things," he replied to the Prince, "that certain persons of the city of Bordeaux have thought proper to proclaim King Louis XVIII. These persons have put them- selves to no trouble, they have not given a farthing,
298 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
they have not raised a soldier to sustain their cause, and now, because they are in danger, they accuse me of not aiding them with my troops. ... I am not sure that I would not outstep my duty in lending your cause the least protection or support. . . . The public must know the truth. If, by ten days from now, you have not contradicted the proclama- tion of the mayor of Bordeaux, which attributes to me the duty of protecting the cause of the royalists of the city, I will publicly contradict it myself."
Left to themselves, the royalists of Bordeaux would doubtless have been lost. What brought about the triumph of their cause was the rupture of the Congress of Chatillon, the capitulation of Paris, and the defection of Essonnes. Meanwhile their deputation had arrived at Hartwell on Annunciation Day, March 25, 1814. It was composed of M. de Tauzia, deputy-mayor of Bordeaux, and Baron de Labarte, bearer of the Duke of Angouleme's de- spatches. At the moment when the two envoys reached the royal residence in a carriage whose pos- tilion and horses were adorned with white cockades, Louis XVIII. and the Duchess of Angouleme were hearing Mass in the chapel of Hartwell. After Mass, the King, with his niece standing beside him, received the Bordelais envoys. He was surrounded by the Archbishop of Rheims, the Count of Blacas, the Dukes of Lorges, Havre", Gramont, Se'rent, and Castires, the Viscount of Agoult, the Count of Pradel, the Chevalier of Riviere, M. Durepaire, the
THE END OF THE EXILE
Duchess of Se'rent, the Countess Etienne of Damas, and the Countess of Choisy. M. de Tauzia, advanc- ing towards the King, presented him a letter in which M. de Lynch entreated him to come to Bor- deaux, where the white flag had been run up. After reading this letter, Louis XVIII. embraced the faithful royalist who brought it. Emotion was at its height. The Duchess of Angoule'me insisted on hearing all the details of her husband's entrance into Bordeaux. Her face, ordinarily so melancholy, beamed with joy.
Louis XVIII. made the following response to the mayor's letter: "Count of Lynch, it is with the only sentiment that a paternal heart could expe- rience that I have learned of the noble outbreak which has given back to me my good city of Bor- deaux. I do not doubt "that this example will be imitated by all other portions of my kingdom; but neither I nor my successors, nor France itself, will forget that, the first restored to liberty, the Borde- lais were also the first to fly into their father's arms. I express feebly what I feel keenly ; but I hope that before long, entering myself within those walls where, to use the language of the good Henri, my fortune has first begun, I can better show the senti- ments which penetrate me. I desire that your fel- low-citizens shall learn this through you ; you have merited this first reward; for, in spite of your modesty, I have been informed of the services you have rendered me, and I experience a real happiness in discharging my debts."
300 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME
This letter was dated March 31, 1814. On that day the Allies entered Paris. Their triumph assured that of Louis XVIII., and it was to Paris, not to Bordeaux, that the Prince was about to repair. During the last days of his stay on British soil, the English government and people lavished enthusi- astic attentions on him. One might have thought him the King of England. Concerning this Lamar- tine has written: "The English nation, moved by the call of Burke and other orators at the tragic death of Louis XVI., the Queen, arid the royal family, indignant witnesses of the execution of the many victims immolated by the Terror, were consti- tutionalists through interest, royalists through piety. The history of the French Revolution, constantlr recited and commented on in London by exiled royalist writers, had become there a poetic chronicle of misfortune, crime, the scaffold, and the throne. England had been generous, prodigal, and hospitable toward the French nobility, then exiled and grate- ful. . . . The fall of Napoleon and his replace- ment on the throne of France by a brother of Louis XVI. seemed to the English one of their greatest historical achievements."
Louis XVIII. and the Duchess of Angouleme left Hartwell April 20, 1814, and on the same day made a formal entry into London. The Prince Regent went as far as Stanmore to meet them. He was preceded by three couriers in royal livery who wore white cockades; the postilions who drove his four-
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horse carriage, in addition to this cockade, wore white hats and vests. The Prince arrived at Stan- more at two in the afternoon. Every house was hung with flags. The gentry of the neighborhood formed a cavalcade which assembled about a mile from the city in order to accompany Louis XVIII. on his entry. Some distance from Stanmore the people unharnessed the horses from the royal car- riage and drew it themselves. Louis XVIII. alighted at the Abercorn inn, where the Prince Regent received him and conversed with him in French. The cortege then proceeded at an easy trot as far as Kilburn, where it began to walk. The entry into London was magnificent. They passed through Hyde Park and Piccadilly in the midst of an immense population who made the air ring with enthusiastic acclamations. The English people could rejoice better than the French people, for neither mourning nor defeat blended with their joy, nor was their country occupied by foreign troops. Ladies waved handkerchiefs from the windows. English and French flags, crowned with laurel, .streamed on the air together. It was nearly six in the evening when the cortege arrived at the Crillon hotel, where Louis XVIII. was to put up. The Duke of Kent's band, stationed near the hotel, played Crod save the King. As the carriage con- taining the King of France and the Prince Regent drew nearer, the popular acclamations redoubled. On alighting from the carriage Louis XVIII.
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took the arm of the Prince Regent, who led him to the principal drawing-room of the hotel Crillon. He sat down there, with the Prince Regent and the Duchess of Angouleme on his right, the Duke of York on his left, and the Prince of Conde" and the Duke of Bourbon behind him. The diplomatic corps Avas present.
The Prince Regent spoke first. " Your Majesty, " said he, " will permit me to offer my congratulations on the great event which has always been one of my dearest wishes, and which must contribute im- mensely not only to the welfare of Your Majesty's people, but also to the repose and prosperity of other nations. I may add with confidence that my senti- ments and personal wishes are in harmony with those of the whole British nation. The transports of triumph which will signalize Your Majesty's entry into your own capital, can hardly surpass the joy which Your Majesty's restoration to the throne of France has caused in the capital of the British Empire."
Louis XVIII. responded: "I beg Your Royal Highness to accept my most lively and sincere thanks for the congratulations just addressed to me. I offer them especially for the continued attentions of which I have been the object, not less from Your Royal Highness than from every member of your illustrious family. It is to the counsels of Your Royal Highness, to this glorious country, and the confidence of its inhabitants, that I attribute, under
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Providence, the re-establishment of our House upon the throne of our ancestors, and this fortunate state of affairs which promises to heal wounds, calm pas- sions, and restore peace, repose, and happiness to all nations."
The King's speech has been severely criticised by every author who has written the history of the Restoration. " These words," says M. Alfred Nette- ment, "overdid Louis XVIII. 's gratitude toward the English government, of whom he had often complained and with reason; they had, moreover, the grave inconvenience of sacrificing a future effect to a present one. As soon as the delirium of peace had quieted down, they could be turned against the King of France and represented as an act of vassal- age toward England by detaching them from the circumstances in which they had been uttered, and the discourse of the Prince Regent which had pro- voked them, like those figures which lose their expression when detached from the picture in which they were introduced."
Lamartine has been still more severe. He says : " These words which were inspired by the gratitude of the exile, but which the dignity of the King of France should have interdicted from his lips, were afterwards the remorse of his reign, and the text of patriotism against his family. France was not merely forgotten in them, but humiliated."
Finally Baron Louis of Viel-Castle has thus expressed himself: "Whether these words were due
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to the excitement of the place and time, or whether they were intentionally aimed at the dominant influence then exercised by the Russian Emperor, it would have been difficult to utter more untoward ones. One fails to understand how they could have issued from the mouth of a Prince who on other occasions gave evidence of dignity and tact. Their plain meaning was that the House of Bourbon owed their recovered throne to England solely; that the other Powers had done nothing towards it, and that the French people themselves had had no part in the recall of their Kings. This was not true. The Emperor Alexander was the real author of the Restoration, with M. de Talleyrand and the Senate, and if the Senate was not the legitimate representa- tive of France, existing laws attributed that char- acter to it up to a certain point. This speech wounded the Russian monarch and the other Allies deeply; it especially displeased and disquieted the members of the provisional government and all those who dreaded to see the Bourbons adopt an anti-national system of reaction."
After his allocution, Louis XVIII., assisted by the Prince of Conde" and the Duke of Bourbon, took off his blue ribbon and his badge of the Order of the Holy Spirit, and decorated the Prince Regent with his own hands. " I esteem myself singularly happy," said he, "to be able to confer the first rib- bon of this ancient Order on a Prince who has so powerfully contributed to the deliverance and resur-
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rection of France." In exchange he received the Order of the Garter.
Louis XVIII. spent three days in London, and then, accompanied by the Prince Regent, he went to Dover, where, on April 24, 1814, he sailed for Calais with the Duchess of AngoulSme, the Prince of Conde', and the Duke of Bourbon.
The royalists will never forget that day. For them it is an apotheosis. The springtime smiled; the sky gloried, and its golden gleams were reflected in an azure sea. Joyous cries and enthusiastic acclamations resounded on land and sea. The Straits of Dover were filled with vessels hung with flags. All England seemed making a cortege for the King of France. The terrible cannons of the two nations, which had so often thundered against each other, united gladly in salvos of concord and rejoicing. The white flag floated at every mast- head, applause renewed itself on every wave.
At one o'clock in the afternoon the King embarked on the Royal Sovereign, the finest vessel in the English fleet, escorted by eight men-of-war, com- manded by the Duke of Clarence. The Prince Regent looked at his departing guests from the win- dows of Dover Castle, and made them signs of farewell. Aided by a favoring wind, the squad- ron advanced rapidly. Louis XVIII. impatiently awaited the moment when they could see the coast of France. God be praised! There it is, that beloved coast, that coast so often desired amidst the
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long griefs of exile ! There is the end of so many trials ! There the port where, after so many storms, the vessel of French monarchy is about to seek a shelter! It is the hour of safety and of triumph.
The seacoast, the ramparts of Calais, and the high places along the shore are thronged with an innumerable crowd. The King, in order to allow himself to be recognized, separates from the group gathered around him on the bridge of the Royal Sov- ereign. He alone takes off his hat. Lifting his eyes to heaven, and laying his right hand on his heart, he returns thanks to Providence. Then, standing on the high prow of the ship, he holds out his arms toward the shore and clasps them again upon his breast as if to embrace his country. The cannon roar. The bells ring with all their might. The cries of the people drown the murmur of the ocean. Then the King points out to the crowd his niece, the Duchess of Angoul6me, who has approached him. At the sight of the saintly Princess, whose woes are already legendary, enthusiasm reaches its height. The holy woman, whose soul is ordinarily straitened by sadness and chagrin, trembles. She weeps, but it is with joy. Such a sentiment is so unfamiliar to her that she sometimes asks herself if she is not the sport of some enchanting dream from which she will have a cruel awakening. So radiant a day seems not to have been made for the daughter of the martyr King and Queen, for the orphan of the Temple, for the woman who has drained to the
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dregs the cup of grief and bitterness. Near her may be seen the Prince of Conde" and the Duke of Bourbon, one of whom is the father and the other the grandfather of the unfortunate Duke of Enghien. From the shore come shouts of "There he is! 'Tis he! the King! Long live the King! Long live Madame ! Long live the Bourbons ! " The authori- ties of Calais go on board the ship and offer their homage to their sovereign. General Maison is the first French general admitted to the honor of saluting him. The ill-luck of the Bourbons will bring them face to face with the same man, sixteen years later, under very different circumstances. But what tri- umpher dreams of future catastrophes ? When Louis XVIII. lands on the jetty, leaning, as of old in the icy plains of Lithuania, on the arm of the daughter of Louis XVI., tears flow from every eye. Alas ! this return to her country is but a halting-place on the road of sorrow for the unhappy Princess. The exile which ends at this moment is to begin anew eleven months later.
INDEX
Alexander I., his sympathy for, and aid to, Louis XVIII., 258; at Mittau, 270; his indifference to Louis XVIII., after Waterloo, 287; considers Bernadotte as a possible ruler for France, 291. Angouleme, Duchess of, the part played by her, 5 ; character of, contrasted with that of the Duch- ess of Berry, 7, 38 ; her life-long aversion to the scenes of her early sufferings, 8; resembles her father, 9 ; birth of, 12 ; relig- ious advice of her father, 13; vicissitudes of her life, 13 et seq.; married to the Duke of Angou- leme, 15 ; called the French Aii- tigone, 16; her series of exiles, 19; death of her husband, 19; her death, 20; her journal in captivity, 49; her anxiety con- cerning her mother, 57 ; rigorous captivity of, 58 ; deprived of the services of her attendant, 58 ; ex- amination of, by members of the Convention, 60; ignorant of her mother's death, 04 ; consoled by the presence and counsels of Madame Elisabeth, 66 ; her trib- ute to Madame Elisabeth, 76 ; in solitary confinement, 78 ; visited by Robespierre, 80; follows the daily routine prescribed by her aunt, 82 ; illness of, 83 ; her ac- count of Ban-as' visit, 85; in charge of Laurent, 86 et seq. the rigors of her captivity ame liorated, 88; not allowed to nurse her brother, 96 ; in ignorance o her brother's death, 105; the
severity of her captivity relaxed, 111 ; Madame de Chantereine as- signed as her companion, 112, 127; learns of the death of her relatives, 112 ; clothes and books given her, 113; Hue and others sing to her from an apart- ment adjoining the Temple, 114 ; visited by Madame de Tourzel and her daughter, 116 et seq.; relates to them details of her captivity, 120 et seq.; her ap- pearance, 121; her resolve to marry the Duke of Angoul^me' 126; correspondence of, with Louis XVIII., 130; has more freedom and is again serenaded, 131; her appearance and de- meanor, 133 ; hopes for a royalist reaction, and is disappointed, 136 et seq.; interrogated with regard to the movement in Paris, 141 ; ransom for, proposed by the Vienna Cabinet, 142 et seq.; negotiations successful, 148; re- ceives the news of her deliver- ance without enthusiasm, 149; asks for her mother's things and is refused, 150; her depart- ure from the Temple, 154 et seq.; the inscription made by her on the walls of her apartment, 155; her travelling companions and in- cidents of her journey to Vienna, 157 et seq.; refuses to accept the trousseau furnished by the Direc- tory, 161, 166; delivered to the Austrian authorities, 166; ar- rives at Vienna, 168 ; is installed in the imperial palace, 171; in-
309
310
PXDEX
terest felt in her, 171; Madame de Soucy separated from her, 172 ; the prisoner of Austria, 174 ; moral force of, 174 ; is the subject of Austrian schemes, 176 et seq.; offended by the proceedings of the Austrian court, 179; goes to join Louis XVIII. at Mittau, 182; her opinion of the emigres, 192 ; her sympathy for them, 199 ; her knowledge of human nature, 200; arrives at Mittau, 217; descrip- tion of, by the Count of Saint- Priest, 218; presented by Louis XVIII. to his household, 219 et seq.; her marriage to the Duke of Angouleme, 223 et seq.; letter of, to Paul I., 223; marriage ceremony between, and the Duke of Angouleme at Mittau, 227 ; the marriage certificate, 228; the signers of it, 229; presents to, and from, 234; her miniature, 234; influence of her pure and lofty character, 236; her appear- ance at Mittau described by Abbe' Georgel, 239; suffers from the state of dependence she is in, 241 ; begs for two days' grace be- fore leaving Mittau, 251; hard- ships of her journey, 252, 257 ; pledges her diamonds, 256; let- ter of, to the Queen of Prussia, 257 ; joined by her husband at Warsaw, 258; letter of, to the Prince of Conde on the murder of the Duke of Enghien, 262; rejoices in her uncle's protest against the Empire, 2(55 ; at home in Warsaw, 268; goes to Mittau, 268 ; nurses the Abbe' Edgeworth, who dies in her arms, 269; at Hartwell, 273; her relations to Louis XVIII., 278; appears at the English court, 278: her life at Hartwell, 280; her household there, 280; enters London with Louis XVIII., 300; returns to France, 306.
Augouleme, Duke of, Ixmis XVI. 's desire to marry Marie The'rese to, 126; not allowed to come to Vienna, 180; offends Peter I. in the matter of the Order of Malta, 212: description of, 221 et seq. ; leaves Mittau for Conde's army, 241 ; letter of, to the Czar, 241 ; with the army at Poutaba, 242 ; rejoins his wife at Warsaw ,- 258; issues a proclamation to Soult's army, 288; enters Bor- deaux and takes possession in the name of Louis XVIII., 296: proclamation of, 297; asks Wel- lington for men and money, 297.
Artois, Count of, unable to be pres- ent at the marriage of Marie The'rese, 225: letter of, to Louis XVIII. on the subject, 226; his declaration of adherence to the cause of Louis XVIII., 2C6 ; often at Hartwell, 280; decides 1.. leave England with his SODS, 289; lands in Holland, 288; au- thorized to come to Nancy, 2!>2.
Austria, designs of, as to the mar- riage of Marie The'rese, 164.
Auger, Count of, commander of the guard provided for Louis XVIII. by Paul I., 209.
Avaray, Count of, sent by Louis XVIII. to conduct Marie The'rese to Verona, 164; the favorite of Louis XVIII. at Hartwell, 281: death of, 283.
Barante, Baron of, describes the court of Louis XVIII. at Mittau. 210, 214; criticises the instrii'1- tions of Louis XVIII. to Saint- Priest, 244.
Barras, arrests Robespierre, 84; pays a visit to the Temple and sees Marie The'rese, 85; made guardian of the children of Louis XVI., 86; his compassion for the young Prince, 96.
INDEX
311
Barere accuses Robespierre of wish- ing to marry Marie The'rese, 84.
Beauharnais, Eugene, spoken of as a possible ruler for France, 291.
Benezech tries to make favor with the Bourbons, 150 et seq. ; an- nounces to the Princess the time of her departure, 153 et seq.
Bernadotte, talked of as a possible ruler for France, 287, 291.
Berry, Duchess of, the part played by her, 5 ; character of, con- trasted with that of the Duchess of Angouleme, 7, 38; her roman- tic disposition, • 10 ; birth and aucestry of, 21 ; married to the Duke of Berry, 21 ; her entry into France, 22; death of her infants, 23 ; her husband stabbed, 24; birth of her son, 25; her popularity and fascination, 26; her valor, 27; at Holyrood, 28; returns to France, 29; in hiding, 29; arrested, 31; taken to the citadel of Blaye, 33; her secret marriage with Count Palli, 34 ; her political career ended, 35; loses her daughter and her hus- band, 37 ; her death, 38.
Berry, Duke of, stabbed, 24; lands on the island of Jersey, 289; letter of, quoted by Chateau- briand, 289.
Beresford, General, occupies Bor- deaux, 295, 296.
BiTtin, M. Ernest, disproves the claims of the pretenders to the title of Louis XVII., 106.
Beurnouville. career of, 145.
Blacas, M. de, succeeds M. d'Ava- ray, as the favorite of Louis XVIII., 283; jealousy of, 283.
Blaye, citadel of, 33 et seq.
Bonaparte, see Napoleon.
Bordeaux, Louis XVIII. proclaimed at, 295; deputation from, to Louis XVIIL, 297 et seq.
Calmar, Louis XVIIL at, -JG6.
Caraman, M. de, banished by the Czar from St. Petersburg, 250.
Chambord, Count of, attachment of to the Duchess of Angouleme, 19.
Chantelauze, M., his book on Louis XVII., 91: destroys the claims of the pretenders to the name of Louis XVIL, 10(5 et seq.
Chantereine, Madame de, assigned by the Committee of Public Safety as companion to Marie The'rese, 111 ; her report to the committee, 112 ; description of, 127.
Chateaubriand, his Buonaparte and the Bourbons, 7; quoted, 8; his devotion to the Duchess of Angouleme, 19; undertakes to reconcile the Duchess of Berry with Charles X., 34 ; on the mar- riage of the Duchess of Angou- leme, 232 ; quoted, 261.
Chauveau-Lagarde, defends Ma- dame Elisabeth before the revo- lutionary tribunal, 71.
Choisy, Mademoiselle de, chosen by Marie The'rese as maid of honor, 237.
Concerts in the Rotunda of the Temple to Marie The'rese, 132.
Conde', Prince of, entertains Paul I. at Chantilly in 1782, 206; at Hart well, 280; letter of, to the Duke of Berry, 281.
Conde, the army of, 193 ; licentious and disorderly, 195 et seq. ; an- nouncement of the marriage of the Duchess of Angouleme to, 2:«; disbanded, 257.
Contades, Count of, remarks of, on the conduct of the emir/re's, 193, 194.
Catherine the Great, her interest in the French e'migr^s, 202; lias little sympathy with Louia XVIIL, 205.
Darboy, Mgr., on Madame Elisa- beth, 54.
312
INDEX
Desault, Dr., emotion of, over the wretched condition of Louis XVII., 102; death of, 103.
Deutz betrays the Duchess of Berry, 32.
Didier, M. Charles, interview of, with the Dnchess of Angouleme, 20.
Doupanloup, Mgr., quoted, 4.
Drouet, one of the prisoners ex- changed for Marie Therese, 144.
Dugnigny, Demoiselles, the Duch- ess of Berry in hiding with, 20.
Dumas, President of the revolu- tionary tribunal, his interroga- tion of Madame Elisabeth, 70.
Edgeworth, Abbe, sent for by Ma- rie The'rese, 219 ; death of, 269.
Elisabeth, Madame, the sole com- panion of Marie The'rese in the Temple, 52; her pure and ele- vated character, 53 et seq. ; her daily prayer in the Temple, 54 ; her patience under her persecu- tion, 59; her pious instructions and consolations to Marie The- rese, 66; examination of by members of the Convention, (il ; taken before the revolutionary tribunal, 68 et seq. ; the act of accusation against her, 69; interrogated by Dumas, 70 ; con- demned to death, 72; exhorts p.nd encourages her companions in the Conciergerie, 73; at the scaffold, 75 ; her last words, 76.
JSmiyrts, their opinion of Napo- leon, 6 ; their characteristics and experiences, 192 et seq. ; at Co- blentz, 195 ; with Conde', 195, 197 ; their destitution, 198; the army of, enters Russia in the service of Paul I., 207.
Enghien, Duke of, sends his ad- hesion to the cause of Louis XVIII., 201 ; murder of, 262.
Eylau, battle of, 269.
Ferrand, M., his description of tho
examination of tho Princesses in
the Temple, 62. Fersen, Count of, relates Marie
Antoinette's comment on the
emigration, 193. Francis II. gives Marie Therese an
establishment in the imperial
palace, 171 ; his children, 171. Frotte, Count of, ;ill.>,uv<l to h;ive
rescued Louis XVII., K>s.
Ge'ramb, Baron of, his description of the Duchess of Angouleme, 278 et seq.
Genet, his description of Paul I., 205.
Georgel, Abbe, comes to Mittau, 238 et seq. ; his description of the court of Louis XVIII. there, 239.
Gomin, testimony of, to the con- dition of Louis XVII., 101 ; paper given to, by the Princess in re- turn for his services, 162.
Gourbillon, Madame, accompanies tho Queen Marie Josephine to Mittau, 217; Louis XVIII. anx- ious to get rid of her, 216.
Gustavus III. on the emigre's, 194.
Havre, Duke of, letter of, on the ambitious plans of Austria with regard to Marie Therese, 178.
Hartwell, the manor of, purchased by Louis XVIII., 273; life at, 274.
Hautefort, Count of, his account of the sale of the diamonds oi the Duchess of AngoulC-me, 256.
Heliert, visit of, to the Temple, 58.
Hompesch, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, 211.
Hue, Fran9ois, arrest of, 64 ; sings to the Princess fi'oin a room ad- joining the Temple, 114 ; warned to desist, 115; brings a letter from Louis XVIII. to the Prin- cess, 130 ; testifies to the increas-
INDEX
313
ing sympathy for the Princess, 151 ; permitted to rejoin the Princess at Huningue, 159; al- lowed to remain in Vienna, 173.
Jeanroi, Doctor, assures Madame de Tourzel of the death of Louis XVII., 129.
Kersabiec, Mademoiselle, in hid- ing with the Duchess of Berry, 29 et seq.
Kolb, Adjutant, escorts Marie Therese to the frontier of Swit- zerland, 167.
Lafare, Mgr., letter of, to Louis XVIII., ou Marie Therese, 180.
Lamartine, quoted with regard to Louis XVIII. and the Duchess of Angouleme, 277 ; quoted, 28G, 300, 303.
Lasne replaces Laurent in the care of the children of Louis XVI., 101.
La Tour d'Auvergne, Countess of, a member of the household of the Duchess of Angouleme, 238.
Laurent, put in provisional charge of the children of Louis XVI., 86,97.
Lehon, Alfred, his I'Angleterre et V Emigration Fran<;aise, quoted, 175.
Legitimists, their opinion of the Empire, 7.
Louis XVII., imprisonment of, in the Temple, 56 et seq.; inhuman treatment of, by his jailor, Simon, 56, 122 ; description of his dun- geon, 90; his condition, 91; in solitary confinement, 92 ; barbar- ous treatment of, 93 et seq.; his wretched condition, 98; partial alleviation of it, 101; Dr. Desault in attendence upon him, 102 ; his last sufferings and death, 104; numerous claimants of his name and title, 105 et seq.; no doubt as to his death, 108.
Louis XVIII., letter of, to Madame
de Tourzel concerning the mar- riage of Marie Therese, 125 ; sends Count of Avaray to bring Marie The'rese to Verona, 164, 181; his ancestry and character, 183; his wife, 183, 184, 187, 190; his flight from France, 184; at Cobleutz, 185; declares himself Regent of France, 185 ; at Verona, 186 ; his counsellors, 187; at Reigel, 188; wounded by a musket ball, 188; treated like an outlaw, 189; at Blankenburg, 190 ; arrives at Mit- tau, the guest of Paul I., 202, 209 et seq. ; respectfully treated by the Russian court, 211 ; his part in the affair of the Grand Order of Malta, 212; humiliated by his position, 214 ; joined by his wife, 216 ; letter of, to Paul I. on the marriage of Marie Therese, 224 ; his letters to Paul I. on the mar- riage of the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, 231; letter of, to the Prince of Conde, 232; ad- dresses a circular letter to his diplomatic agents, 233; descrip- tion of him by Abbe Georgel, 239; his pensions from Paul I. and the King of Spain, 240 ; de- ceives himself concerning a res- toration, 243 et seq. ; his expec- tations dashed by the battle of Marengo, 245; expelled from Russia, 249 et seq. ; sets out on his journey, 252; travels as the Count of Lille, 254; at Memel, 255; arrival of his body-guard, 255; at Warsaw, 257; declara- tion of, in reply to Bonaparte's proposal, 259 ; letter of, to Bona- parte in 1800, 262; letter of, to Charles IV., returning the Golden Fleece, 264; his protest against the Empire, 264 ; at Calmar, 266; returns to Mittau, 268 ; letter of, concerning the death of the Abb^ Edgeworth, 269; leaves Mittau for Sweden, 271 ; goes to Eng-
811
1XDEX
land, 272; buys the manor of Hart well, 273; keeps up the semblance of royalty, 275 ; death of his wife and her burial in Westminster Abbey, 275 ; his relations with the Duchess of Angouleme, 278; letter of, to Alexander I. in behalf of the French prisoners in Russia, 285 et seq. ; convinced of his return to France, 287; receives the
' homage of Bordeaux, 297 ; and a deputation from the Borde- lais, 298; response of, to the letter of the mayor of Bordeaux, 299; his popularity in England, 300; enters London and is re- ceived by the Prince Regent, 300 et seq. ; his reply to the Prince Regent's address, 302 ; criticisms of this speech, 303; decorates the Prince, 304 ; sails for France, SOS ; his arrival there, 307.
Louise of France, Princess, her career, 39.
Lynch, M. de, mayor of Bordeaux, sends agents to Wellington, 294, 295 ; letter of ,to Louis XVIII.,299.
Macartney, Lord, expresses the sentiments of the French royal- ists of Vienna for Austria, 176; his letter describing Louis XVIII., 186.
Mackau, Baroness of, permitted to visit Marie Therese in the Tem- ple, 124; writes to Louis XVIII. concerning her, 125.
Malta taken by Bonaparte, 211 ; given to the Czar by Bonaparte, 248 ; seized by the English, 249.
Malta, the Order of, schemes of Paul I. with regard to, 211 et seq.
Maistre, Joseph de, his comment on the treatment of the emigre's by the Russians, 203.
Marengo, battle of, adjourns the expectations of the court of Mittau, 245.
Maret, one of the prisoner* ex- changed for Marie Therese, 140.
Marie Antoinette, a study of her character necessary to ;m under- standing of the Revolution, 3; in the Temple, 48 ; leaves it for the Conciergerie, 49.
Marie .Josephine, 1&3, 187, 190: joins Louis XVIII. at Mittau 21(5; death of, at Hart well, aud burial in Westminster Abbey, -T.'i.
Marie Louise, the little, receives much attention from Marie The- rese, 171.
Marie The'rese, see Duchess of Angouleme.
Marriage of the Duke of Angou- leme and Marie Therese at Mit- tau, 227 etse.q.
Michelet, quoted, 4.
Mittau, account of, 210; Louis XVIII. at, IX) et seq.; the court at, its personnel and support, 240.
Montmorency-Laval, Cardinal, per- forms the marriage ceremony of the Duke and Duchess of Angou- leme, 227.
Napoleon, how regarded by the tfouV/re's, 6; and by the legiti- mists, 7 ; Chateaubriand's bro- chure on him, 7; his debut on the 13th Vendemiaire, 138: gives Malta to the Czar, 248; letter of, to Louis XVIII. and the Bourbons, 276 : his court like theirs, 277.
Narbonne, Countess of, at Hart- well, 274.
Naundorff , pretender to the title of Louis XVII., 106.
Orleans, deputation from, demand the release of Marie Therese, 110.
Parma, Duke of, assassination of, 36; his marriage to Louise of France, 41.
Paul I., enthusiastic for Louis
INDEX
XVIII. and the emigres, 205 ; his character, 205; his reception at Versailles in 1782, 206, 224 ; takes Conde's army into his pay, 207 ; gives Louis XVIII. a refuge at Mittau, 209; his schemes con- cerning the order of Malta, 211 ; jealous of his guest, Louis XVIII. , 2U; finds the court of Louis XVIII. at Mittau a burden, 215; signs the marriage certificate of the Duke and Duchess of Angou- leme, 232; becomes infatuated with the First Consul, 246 ; cause of his change of attitude towards Louis XVIII., 247; becomes the ally of Bonaparte, 249; assassi- nation of, 258.
Pichegru, General, communicates the proposal of the exchange of Maria Therese to General Stein, 147.
Polastron, Madame de, beloved by the Count of Artois, 280.
Prince Regent, address of, to Louis XVIII., 302.
Puymaigre, Count of, his account of the march of Conde's army to Russia, 257 ; quoted, 257.
Richard, Madame, sends word of
Marie Antoinette to the Temple,
63. Richmont, pretended son of Louis
XVI., 108. Robespierre, visits Marie Therese
in the Tower, 80 ; overthrow of,
84, 86. Remain, Count of, quoted, 168.
Sainte-Beuve, his description of the journal of Marie The'rese, 49.
Saint-Priest, Count of, sent by Louis XVIII. to Vienna with in- structions to ask for a recogni- tion, 243.
Serent, Madame de, with the Duch- ess of Angouleme at Mittau, 237.
Simon, the Cobbler, the jailor of
Louis XVII., 56; gives up his
position, 92. Soucy, Madame de, accompanies
Marie Therese to Vienna, 152;
separated from her, 172. Sorel, Albert, his I'Europe ct la
Revolution fran<;aise, quoted, 203
et seq. Stein, General, 147.
Temple, the, its associations and a description of, 45 et seq.; the apartments of the royal family in, 47.
Thiers, pays too little attention to Josephine in his history, 3; his bargain with Deutz, 32.
Thugut, Baron, hostile to the Emi- gres, 177 ; his ambitious schemes for Austria with regard to Marie Therese, 178.
Tison, the attendant of the Prin- cesses in the Temple, removed, 59.
Tourzel, Duchess of, her visit to Marie Therese, 81 ; extract from her journal, 88 ; extract from her Memoirs relating to Louis XVII., 101 ; visits the Princess, 116 ; her relations to the royal family, 117 ; her loyalty to them, 118 ; obtains permission to visit the Princess regularly, 119, 124; her descrip- tion of Madame Chantereine, 127 ; shows Dr. Jeanroi a portrait of the Prince and is assured of his death, 129; brings about a correspondence between Louis XVIII. and the Princess, 130; forbidden to visit the Temple, 141; not allowed to accompany Marie The'rese to Vienna, 150.
Tressau, Abbe de, his description of the reception of Marie Th6- rese at Mittau, 209 et seq. Treilhard, advocates in the Conven- tion the exchange of Marie Th6- rese, 142.
Turgy, carries news of Marie An- toinette to the Princesses, 63.
316
INDEX
Viel-Castel, M. de, his History of the Restoration quoted, 284 ; condemns the speech of Louis XVIII., in reply to the Prince Regent, 303.
Vitrolles, M. de, interviews of, with Metternich and the Czar, 291, 292; memoirs of, quoted with regard to Bonaparte and the Bourbons, 276; describes Louis XVIII. 's relations to his court at Hartwell, 281 ; hears of the Count of Artois' arrival in France, 290.
Warin, Regnault, his romance of
the pretended Louis XVII.s. 106.
Warsaw, Louis XVIII. at, 257 ; the Duchess of Angouleme at home in, 268.
Wansted House, declaration dated at, from the Count of Artois, the Duke of Berry, and others, 260.
Wellington, Lord, has little sym- pathy with the Bourbons, 294; approached by the mayor of Bordeaux, 294; decides to occupy that city, 295 ; refuses to aid the Bourbon cause, 298.
Woman, the influence of, too much neglected in history, 3.
Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston. Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston.
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS.
the past two years the publishers have issued translations often of M. Imbert de Saint- Amand's histori- cal works, relating to the momentous and agitated period dating from the beginnings of the French Revolution to the seating of Louis XVIII. on the throne of his ancestors after the battle of Waterloo. Of these three have had as a nucleus the historic portion of the life of Marie Antoinette, three that of the life of Josephine, and four are devoted to the events centring around the figure of the Empress Marie Louise. The success of these works has been so unequivocal from the first, that the pub- lishers have begun the issue of the important volumes of M. de Saint-Amand's series relating to the period immediately following the Napoleonic era, the period of the Restoration. Of this period the author's " famous women of the French Court" are the Duchess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry. Like their predecessors these volumes are largely biographical and possess the lively interest belonging to personality, but, as before also, they are equally pictures of the times to which they relate, and are largely made up of contemporary memoirs and letters and original documents.
The period itself, though on account of its proximity to the era of France's most stirring annals and greatest glory it has been overshadowed in popular imagination, is one of the greatest interest, and, in fact, the first two volumes largely
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT.
relate to the Imperial epoch, viewed from the side of the Royalist emigres. The story of the exiled Bourbons and their adherents during these days has rarely been told, and especially novel and interesting is the account, from the inside, of the panic and flight of the king and his party at the time of the dramatic return from Elba. The exile at Ghent followed, then Waterloo and the second return of the Bourbons this time exasperated and vindictive, the trials and execution of General Labe*doyere and Marshal Ney, the escape of Lavalette, the reconstitution of society as it settled into grooves of peace after so many years of war, the assassination of the Duke of Berry, the Ministry of the Duke Decazes, and the political conduct of the close of Louis XVIII. 's reign.
Of this period the Duchess of Angouleme at first and then the Duchess of Berry were the salient feminine figures. The former notably was a woman of force and influence, besides exercising authority as the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and arousing interest and sympathy for the sufferings of her early life when she was a prisoner in the Temple and was successively bereft of her father, mother, aunt, and brother. No children having been born of her marriage with her cousin, the son of the future Charles X., the eyes of the Court and nation were turned toward the lively and charming Duchess of Berry after her union with the younger brother of the Duke of Angouleme, the union from which sprang the late Count of Chambord, and the more sprightly and adventurous Neapolitan succeeded her graver sister-in-law as the centre of Court society. Of both these contrasting and interesting personalities, as well as of a score of others influential at this time, M. de Saint-Amand has drawn most speaking portraits, and added to the historical value of his books a very great biographic interest.
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Immediately upon her marriage with the Duke of Berry the Neapolitan princess Caroline became the central figure of the Court of Louis XVIII., an account of the main portion of whose reign, rendered eventful by the assassina- tion of the Duke of Berry, the birth of the Count of Chambord, heir to the throne and the last of the French Bourbons, the war with Spain, and the political struggle between liberalism and absolutist tendencies.
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In this series is unfolded the tremendous panorama of political events in which the unfortunate Queen had so influential a share, beginning with the days immediately preceding the Revolution, when court life at Versailles was so gay and unsuspecting, continuing with the enforced journey of the royal family to Paris, and the agitating months passed in the Tuileries, and concluding with the abolition of royalty, the proclamation of the Republic, and the imprisonment of the royal family— the initial stage of their progress to the guillotine.
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The romantic and eventful period beginning with Josephine's marriage, com- prises the astonishing Italian campaign, the Egyptian expedition, the coup cfitat of Brumaire, and is described in the first of the above volumes, while the second treats of the brilliant society which issued from the chaos of the Revolu- tion, and over which Madame Bonaparte presided so charmingly, and the third of the events between the assumption of the imperial title by Napoleon and the end of 1807 including, of course, the Austerlitz campaign.
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