Versailles and More

21st of January 1793: execution of Louis XVI

As usual on this blog, I will strive to recount this dramatic event through the testimony of eyewitnesses.

Let us simply remember that, following the storming of the royal palace of the Tuileries on the 10th of August 1792, Louis XVI and his family (Marie-Antoinette, their two children, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte and Louis-Charles, and his sister Madame Elisabeth) were jailed in the medieval tower of the Temple.

Then, in December of 1792, the trial of the deposed King had commenced before the National Convention, the newly elected legislative body. The votes were tallied, counted and recounted for days, and it seemed that, though the guilty verdict on the counts of treason was a foregone conclusion, the King might receive a stay of the death sentence. Yet in the end by an extremely narrow margin (some say one single ballot) the Convention voted in favor of the immediate execution of Louis XVI. What happened next?

First we will listen to Madame Royale, the King’s daughter, then fourteen:

About seven in the evening [of the 20th] we learned of the sentence by the newspapermen, who came shouting it under our windows: a decree of the Convention allowed us to see the King. We ran to his apartment, and found him much altered; he wept for us, not for fear of death (more…)

16th of October 1793: execution of Marie-Antoinette

After the fall of the monarchy on the 10th of August 1792, the dethroned Queen was imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, along with her husband, Louis XVI, their children and Madame Elisabeth, the King’s younger sister.

The following December, Louis XVI stands trial before the National Convention, the elected body that now governs France. Louis is executed on the 21st of January 1793. Then, the following August, Marie-Antoinette is transferred, alone, without her children or sister-in-law Madame Elisabeth, to the jail of La Conciergerie. It is located within the premises of the main Courthouse of Paris, next to the Revolutionary Tribunal. For an ordinary prisoner that would mean that trial is imminent.

But Marie-Antoinette is no ordinary prisoner. She may have some value as a hostage in war negotiations with the Austrians, and the National Convention sends emissaries to that effect to the enemy. But Marie-Antoinette’s brothers, Joseph II and Leopold II, no longer reign over Austria. The new Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, her nephew, has never met her. He is not ready to compromise the hopes of a victory against the French armies for the sake of an aunt he does not know (more…)

The 10th of August 1792: fall of the French monarchy

The 10th of August 1792 is one of the key dates of the French Revolution. Why was the populace of Paris so enraged at the King and Queen?

The war on Austria had been declared a few months earlier, and had turned into a military disaster for France. The Austrians and their Prussian allies were advancing fast into French territory. Reports of their atrocities spread to Paris. Along their path, villages were set ablaze, women were violated by entire battalions, civilians were slaughtered. Patriots volunteered to defend the Nation at this hour of desperate need. From the perspective of the King and Queen, the Austrians and Prussians would restore the monarchy under its traditional form, and their rapid success was welcome news. From the standpoint of the Parisians, foreign invaders were the enemy, and Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, along with their followers, were traitors. The divorce between the monarchy and Paris was now complete. The closer the foreign armies drew to Paris, the greater the royal family’s danger became. Preparations had been made openly for days for an attack on the royal palace of the Tuileries.

In my first novel, Mistress of the Revolution, I chose to place my heroine, Gabrielle, at the Tuileries on the 10th of August. I based her recollections and reactions on the Memoirs of two eyewitnesses who saw the storming of the Tuileries from the inside of the palace: Madame de Tourzel, Governess of the Royal Children, and Madame Campan, First Chambermaid to the Queen (more…)