Imbert de Saint-Amand - Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty

Marie Antoinette

Paris in 1792 is no longer what it was in 1789. In 1789, the old French society was still brilliant. The past endured beside the present. Neither names nor escutcheons, neither liveries nor places at court, had been suppressed. The aristocracy and the Revolution lived face to face. In 1792, the scene has changed. The Paris of the nobility is no longer in Paris, but at Coblentz. The Faubourg Saint-Germain is like a desert. Since June, 1790, armorial bearings have been taken down. The blazons of ancient houses have been broken and thrown into the gutters. No more display, no more liveries, no more carriages with coats-of-arms on their panels. Titles and manorial names are done away with. The Duke de Brissac is called M. Coss; the Duke de Caraman, M. Riquet; the Duke d'Aiguillon, M. Vignerot. The Almanach royal of 1792 mentions not a single court appointment.

In 1789, it was still an exceptional thing for the nobility to emigrate. In 1792, it is the rule. Those among the nobles who have had the courage to remain at Paris in the midst of the furnace, so as to make a rampart for the King of their bodies, seem half ashamed of their generous conduct. The illusions of worldliness have been dispelled. Nearly every salon was open in 1789. In 1792, they are nearly all closed; those of the magistrates and the great capitalists as well as those of the aristocracy. Etiquette is still observed at the Tuileries, but there is no question of ftes; no balls, no concerts, none of that elegance and animation which once made the court a rendezvous of pleasures. In 1789, illusions, dreams, a nave expectation of the age of gold, were to be found everywhere. In 1792, eclogues and pastoral poetry are beginning to go out of fashion. The diapason of hatred is pitched higher. Already there is powder and a smell of blood in the air. A general instinct forebodes that France and Europe are on the verge of a terrible duel. On both sides passions have touched their culminating point. Distrust and uneasiness are universal. Every day the despotism of the clubs becomes more threatening. The Jacobins do not reign yet, but they govern. Deputies who, if left to their own impulses, would vote on the conservative side, pronounce for the Revolution solely through fear of the demagogues. In 1789, the religious sentiment still retained power among the masses. In 1792, irreligion and atheism have wrought their havoc. In 1789, the most ardent revolutionists, Marat, Danton, Robespierre, were all royalists. At the beginning of 1792, the republic begins to show its face beneath the monarchical mask.

The Tuileries, menaced by the neighboring lanes of the Carrousel and the Palais Royal, resembles a besieged fortress. The Revolution daily augments its trenches and parallels around the sanctuary of the monarchy. Its barracks are the faubourgs; its soldiers, red-bonneted pikemen. Louis XVI. in his palace is like a general-in-chief in a stronghold, who should have voluntarily dampened his powder, spiked his cannon, and torn his flags. He no longer inspires his troops with confidence. A capitulation seems imminent. The unfortunate monarch still hopes vaguely for assistance from abroad, for the arrival of some liberating army. Vain hope! He is blockaded in his castle, and the moment is at hand when he will be compelled to play the buffoon in a red bonnet.

Glance at the palace and see how closely it is hemmed in by the earthworks of the Revolution. The abode of luxury and display, intended for ftes rather than for war, Philibert Delorme's chef-d'oeuvre has in its architecture none of those means of defence by which the military and feudal sovereignties of old times fortified their dwellings. On the side of the courtyards a multitude of little streets contain a hostile population ready to swell every riot. Near the Pavilion of Marsan is the Palais Royal, that headquarters of insurrection, with its cafs, its gambling-dens, its houses of ill-fame, its wooden galleries which are known as the camp of the Tartars. It is the Duke of Orleans who has democratized the Palais Royal. In spite of the sarcasms of the aristocracy and the lawsuits of neighboring proprietors, he has destroyed the fine gardens bounded by the rue de Richelieu, the rue des Petit-Champs, and the rue des Bons-Enfants. In the place it occupied he has caused the rue de Valois, the rue de Beaujolais, and the rue de Montpensier to be opened, all of them inhabited by a revolutionary population. The remaining space he has surrounded on three sides with constructions pierced by galleries, where he has built the shops that form the finest bazaar in Europe. The fourth side of these new constructions was originally intended to form part of the Prince's palace, and to be composed of an open colonnade supporting suites of apartments. But this side has not been erected. In place of it the Duke of Orleans has run up some temporary wooden sheds, containing three rows of shops separated by two large passage-ways, the ground of which has not even been made level.

The privileges pertaining to the Orleans family prevent the police from entering the enclosure of the Palais Royal. Hence it becomes the rendezvous of all conspirators. The taking of the Bastille was plotted there, and there the 20th of June and the 10th of August will yet be organized.

A little further off is the National Assembly. Its sessions are held in the riding-school built when the little Louis XV. was to be taught horsemanship. It adjoins the terrace of the Feuillants. One of its courtyards which looks towards the front of the edifice, is at the upper end of the rue de Dauphin. The other extremity occupies the site where the rue Castiglione will be opened later on. There, close beside the Tuileries, sits the National Assembly, the rival and victorious power that will overcome the monarchy.