the people’s demand, there is a chance they will try to place the duc d’Orléans on the throne in my stead. There will be no more shedding of blood; the Salle des Gardes is already red and reeking with the sacrifice of two brave souls and many more guards are dead and injured.”
My husband rises from his armchair and makes his way back to the balcony. Addressing these vicious insurgents as his friends, he tells the mob, “I will go to Paris with my wife and children. I confide all that I hold most dear to the love of my good and faithful subjects.”
They have won. And so they cheer him.
We are lost.
My ladies help me pack what I can, but there is not much I can salvage. My bedchamber has been gutted and it is probably unwise to bring too much from the royal wardrobe. Général Lafayette’s word to the people of France that I have seen the error of my ways would appear to be worthless if I continued to dress as opulently as ever. And so, in this grandest of shams I must play a role, feigning humility before those who hate me and wish me dead, no matterwhat I wear. But if it will keep my children safe and my husband alive, I will do it.
“Do you think we will ever return?” I ask Louis, as we reach a small staircase which leads to the Cour de Marbre. We cannot even exit the Château de Versailles the way we entered the palace in June of 1774 after my husband ascended the throne. There will be no descending the grand marble stairs in the manner of monarchs—because the treads are slick with blood. Instead, we flee like refugees.
The king makes no reply. At least he makes no pretense of sweetening a bitter cordial by lying to me. I swallow hard, not wishing the ministers and courtiers, nor even my attendants to see that I am on the verge of tears. I wonder in this instant what my late mother would have made of this moment. Would she chide, “I warned you many times, but you never heeded,” or would the corners of her mouth, usually set in an expression of formidable determination, soften and her eyes dim with tears, fretting over the fate of “the little one,” her favorite child?
By the time we are ready to depart, the clock has struck one P.M . The carriages that will convey us to Paris wait in the courtyard, yet we all must run a gauntlet of sorts to reach them. Lafayette and his Garde Nationale clear a path and we make our way through the rabble as their jeers and curses rain down upon us. An old woman clears her throat and spits upon the dauphin, the gobbet landing on my son’s smooth pink cheek. He begins to cry and I wipe the spittle away with my handkerchief. I immediately turn to say something to the harridan, but we are surrounded by raised weapons, so I remain silent instead.
The mob chooses not to fire the cannons in a celebratory salute announcing our departure because drunken women have clambered upon them and are riding astride the black iron barrels as though the guns are war horses. Soldiers from the Garde Nationaleopen the gates and our coach begins to roll forward, the horses scarcely moving, for they have nowhere to go. We are surrounded on all sides by harpies who continue to hurl insults at us through the closed windows of the carriage. At the front of this procession of two thousand carriages, conveying not only the royal family but our courtiers and household goods, the severed heads of our bodyguards are carried aloft on pikes, macabre trophies of the people’s victory.
And so, we leave Versailles, after being trapped within the carriage for twenty-five interminable minutes. I consider turning around to look back, but I would see nothing of the palace that was my residence for nearly twenty years because we are mobbed on all sides. They call me l’Autrichenne —the Austrian bitch—but I have been a Frenchwoman since I was fourteen, for longer than many of the rioters are old. They crowd the coach and peer into the windows, pulling ugly faces and frightening my children.
The
My husband rises from his armchair and makes his way back to the balcony. Addressing these vicious insurgents as his friends, he tells the mob, “I will go to Paris with my wife and children. I confide all that I hold most dear to the love of my good and faithful subjects.”
They have won. And so they cheer him.
We are lost.
My ladies help me pack what I can, but there is not much I can salvage. My bedchamber has been gutted and it is probably unwise to bring too much from the royal wardrobe. Général Lafayette’s word to the people of France that I have seen the error of my ways would appear to be worthless if I continued to dress as opulently as ever. And so, in this grandest of shams I must play a role, feigning humility before those who hate me and wish me dead, no matterwhat I wear. But if it will keep my children safe and my husband alive, I will do it.
“Do you think we will ever return?” I ask Louis, as we reach a small staircase which leads to the Cour de Marbre. We cannot even exit the Château de Versailles the way we entered the palace in June of 1774 after my husband ascended the throne. There will be no descending the grand marble stairs in the manner of monarchs—because the treads are slick with blood. Instead, we flee like refugees.
The king makes no reply. At least he makes no pretense of sweetening a bitter cordial by lying to me. I swallow hard, not wishing the ministers and courtiers, nor even my attendants to see that I am on the verge of tears. I wonder in this instant what my late mother would have made of this moment. Would she chide, “I warned you many times, but you never heeded,” or would the corners of her mouth, usually set in an expression of formidable determination, soften and her eyes dim with tears, fretting over the fate of “the little one,” her favorite child?
By the time we are ready to depart, the clock has struck one P.M . The carriages that will convey us to Paris wait in the courtyard, yet we all must run a gauntlet of sorts to reach them. Lafayette and his Garde Nationale clear a path and we make our way through the rabble as their jeers and curses rain down upon us. An old woman clears her throat and spits upon the dauphin, the gobbet landing on my son’s smooth pink cheek. He begins to cry and I wipe the spittle away with my handkerchief. I immediately turn to say something to the harridan, but we are surrounded by raised weapons, so I remain silent instead.
The mob chooses not to fire the cannons in a celebratory salute announcing our departure because drunken women have clambered upon them and are riding astride the black iron barrels as though the guns are war horses. Soldiers from the Garde Nationaleopen the gates and our coach begins to roll forward, the horses scarcely moving, for they have nowhere to go. We are surrounded on all sides by harpies who continue to hurl insults at us through the closed windows of the carriage. At the front of this procession of two thousand carriages, conveying not only the royal family but our courtiers and household goods, the severed heads of our bodyguards are carried aloft on pikes, macabre trophies of the people’s victory.
And so, we leave Versailles, after being trapped within the carriage for twenty-five interminable minutes. I consider turning around to look back, but I would see nothing of the palace that was my residence for nearly twenty years because we are mobbed on all sides. They call me l’Autrichenne —the Austrian bitch—but I have been a Frenchwoman since I was fourteen, for longer than many of the rioters are old. They crowd the coach and peer into the windows, pulling ugly faces and frightening my children.
The
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