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On arriving at the Temple on Monday, August 13th, 1792, at six o'clock in the evening, the Artillery-men under Santerre wished to take my father to the Tower and leave us in the château. Manuel had received on the way a decree of the Commune designating the Tower as our common prison. However, they calmed the artillery-men and we entered the château first, where the municipal guards kept my father and all of us within sight. An hour later, Pétion went away and my father supped with us. At eleven, my brother dying with sleep, Mme. de Tourzel took him to the Tower, where we were all to go, although nothing had been prepared to receive us. My father was surrounded by the municipal guards, drunk and insolent, who sat down beside him, and talked in a loud voice without the slightest regard to him. At one o'clock we were at last taken over to the Tower, where Manuel, as secretary-general of the Commune, committed us. He was ashamed himself, to find this lodging bare of everything, and such that my aunt was reduced to sleep in the kitchen for several nights.
The persons who were shut up with us in this fatal place were the Princesse de Lamballe, Mme. de Tourzel and her daughter Pauline, M. de Chamilly, my father's head valet de chambre, M. Huë, in the service of my brother, Mmes. Cimbris, Thibaut, Navarre, and Bazire, waiting-women to my brother, my mother, my aunt, and myself. My father was lodged above on the third floor of the building adjacent to the main body of the Tower; having a municipal guard in his room. My aunt occupied a kitchen with Mlle. de Tourzel and Mme. Navarre; my mother lodged below in a salon, with me and afterwards Mme. de Lamballe; and in a third room was my brother with Mme. de Tourzel his governess, and his maid, Mme. Cimbris; this was a billiard-room. Mmes. Thibaut and Bazire slept below. In the kitchen of the château, destined for our service, were Turgy, Chrétien, and Marchand, men long attached to the king's household, who brought the dishes for our meals to the Tower.
The next day my father came to breakfast at nine o'clock in my mother's room, and afterwards we all went together to look over the Tower, because they wanted to make bedchambers of the great rooms. We returned to dine on the first floor in a room adjoining the library. After dinner, Manuel and Santerre commander of the National Guard, came to the Tower, and my father went to walk with them in the garden. On our arrival the previous day they had demanded the departure of the women who were in our service, and we even found new women chosen by Pétion waiting to serve us, but they were not accepted. The day but one after, during our dinner, they brought us a decree of the Commune ordering that our women and even the ladies should be removed. My father opposed this vehemently and so did the municipal guards, which annoyed those who had brought the order. We were each asked privately if we did not wish for others; on which, having all responded no, things remained as they were.
From this time we were busy in regulating our hours. We passed the whole day together; my father taught my brother geography and history; my mother made him learn and recite verses; my aunt taught him arithmetic. Fortunately there was a Library adjoining our apartments [that of the guard of the Archives of Malta], where my father found an agreeable diversion; my mother, my aunt, and I often did worsted-work.
My father asked for a man and woman to do the rough work, and a few days later they sent a man named Tison and his wife. The guards became daily more uncivil and insolent, and they never left us one instant alone, either when we were together or separate. Mme. de Lamballe was allowed to write to the outside and ask for the things she needed, but always in open letters read by the municipals. At last, during the night of the 19th and 20th of August, they brought and read in all our rooms a decree of the Commune removing from the Tower all persons who were not of the royal family. They ordered Mme. de Lamballe to rise. My mother tried to oppose it by urging that she was her relative, but in vain; they replied that they had orders to take her away and question her. Obliged to submit, we all rose, with death in our hearts, to bid these ladies farewell [an eternal farewell to the Princesse de Lamballe, and it seemed as if we had a presentiment of her horrible fate. MM. de Chamilly and Huë were also taken away]; our waiting-women were prevented from taking leave of us.
Every one having gone, my brother was left alone in his room, and they brought him, still asleep, into that of my mother where two municipals were on guard. Unable to go to sleep again, even my brother who was awakened by the noise, we passed the night together; my father, though awakened, remained in his room with a municipal. The men who took away the ladies assured us they would return after their examination, but we learned the next day that they had been taken to the prison of La Force. M. Huë, however, returned at nine o'clock the next morning; the Council, having judged him innocent, sent him back to the Temple.
My mother, left thus alone, took charge of my brother, who slept in her room; I went to occupy the billiard-room with my aunt, and the municipal kept himself during the day in the queen's room and at night with the sentinel in the little room between us. My father remained above, where he slept; we went up to breakfast with him while they cleaned my mother's chamber, after which my father came down and spent the entire day with us.
The 24th, towards one in the morning, they came to search my father's room under pretence of looking for arms, and they took away his sword. The next day, the day of Saint-Louis, they shouted the "Ça ira" close by the Temple. We then heard that M. de la Fayette [having ended his rôle], had abandoned the army and quitted France, which news was confirmed to my father that evening by Manuel, who at the same time brought a letter, which had been opened, to my Aunt Élisabeth from my great-aunts in Rome; this was the last that my family received from without. Not only was my father no longer treated as king, but he was not even treated with simple respect; he was not called Sire or Your Majesty, but merely Monsieur, or Louis; the municipal guards sat down in his room, their hats on their heads. It was then that Pétion sent Cléry for the service of my brother, to which he already belonged; and he installed as jailers or turnkeys of the Tower two men named Risbey and Rocher. The latter was the horrible man who on the 20th of June had forced my father's door and tried to kill him. This monster roamed around us continually with dreadful glances; he never ceased torturing my father in every possible way; sometimes he sang the Carmagnole, and other such horrors; at other times he puffed the smoke of his pipe into my father's face as he passed, knowing that he disliked the smell of it; at night when we went to supper, as we were obliged to pass through his room, he was always in his bed, and sometimes he would be there at our dinner hour, pretending to sleep; in short there was no kind of insult and insolence he did not invent to torment us.
Meantime the king lacked everything; he therefore wrote to Pétion to obtain the money which was intended for him; but he received no answer and our discomforts were multiplied daily. The garden, the only place where my father could take the air, was full of workmen, who insulted us to such a point that one of them boasted he would knock off my mother's head, but Pétion had him arrested. Even at the windows on the street which looked into the garden, people came expressly to insult us. On the 2d of September, as we were walking there towards four in the afternoon, not knowing what was going on outside, a woman stood at one of those windows who loaded my father with insults and dared to assail him with stones which fell beside him; another of those windows offered us at the same moment a very touching contrast. How precious to the unfortunate is a mark of interest! A woman, not less feeling than courageous, having written on a large card the news of the taking of Verdun by the coalition army, held it towards us at a window long enough for us to read it, which my aunt did without the municipals perceiving it.
We had hardly rejoiced at the news when a new municipal arrived, named Matthieu [a former capuchin monk]. Inflamed with anger he came to my father and told him to follow him, which we all did, fearing that they meant to separate us. Going upstairs we met M. Huë, and Matthieu told him he arrested him; . . . then, turning to my father, he said all that fury could suggest, and especially these words: "The générale is beaten, the cannon of warning is fired, the tocsin is sounding, the enemies are at Verdun, if they come we shall all perish, but you the first." My father listened to his threats firmly, with the calm of innocence, but my brother, terrified, burst into tears and ran into the next room, where I followed him and did my best to console him, but in vain; he imagined he saw my father dead. Meantime, M. Huë having returned, Matthieu, continuing his insults, took him away with him and shut him up in the prison of the Mairie, instead of that of the Abbaye where he was to have gone, but the massacre of that day had already begun there . . . We heard that in the end he was set at liberty, but he never returned to the Temple.
The municipals all condemned the violent conduct of Matthieu, but they did not do better. They told my father they were certain the King of Prussia was on the march and killing all Frenchmen by an order signed by Louis. There were no calumnies they did not invent, even the most ridiculous and the most incredible. My mother, who could not sleep. heard the générale beaten all night.
September 3d at eight in the morning, Manuel came to see my father, and assured him that Mme. de Lamballe and the other persons taken from the Temple were well and all [Page 249] together, tranquilly, in La Force. At three in the afternoon we heard dreadful outcries; my father left the dinner-table and played backgammon with my mother, to control his countenance and be able to say a few words to her without being heard. The municipal guard in the room behaved well; he closed the door and window, also the curtains, so that they might see nothing. The workmen at the Temple and the jailer Rocher joined the murderers, which increased the noise. Several officers of the National Guard and some municipals arrived; the first desired that my father should show himself at the window. The municipals fortunately opposed this; but my father, having asked what was happening, a young officer replied: "Well, if you want to know, it is the head of Mme. de Lamballe they wish to show you." My mother was seized with horror; that was the sole moment when her firmness abandoned her. The municipals scolded the officer, but my father, with his usual kindness, excused him, saying it was not the officer's fault, but his own for having questioned him. The noise lasted till five o'clock.
We learned that the people had tried to force the gates; that the municipals had prevented it by tying across the door a tricolour scarf; and that finally they had allowed six of the murderers to enter and walk round our prison with the head of Mme. de Lamballe, but on condition that they left the body, which they wanted to drag round, at the gate. When this deputation entered, Rocher uttered shouts of joy on seeing the head of Mme. de Lamballe, and scolded a young man who was taken ill, so horrified was he at the sight.
The tumult was hardly over before Pétion, instead of exerting himself to stop the massacre, coldly sent his secretary to my father to reckon about money. This man was very ridiculous, and said many things which would have made us laugh at another moment; he thought my mother remained standing on his account; for since that awful scene she had continued standing, motionless, and seeing nothing that took place in the room. The municipal guard who had sacrificed his scarf at the door made my father pay for it. My aunt and I heard the générale beaten all night; my unhappy mother did not even try to sleep; we listened to her sobs. We did not suppose that the massacre was still going on; it was not until some time later that we learned it had lasted three days.
It is impossible to give all the scenes that took place, as much on the part of the municipals as on that of the National Guard; everything alarmed them, so guilty did they feel themselves. Once, during supper, there was a cry to arms; it was thought that the foreigners were arriving; the horrible Rocher took a sabre and said to my father, "If they come I will kill you." It was only some trouble with the patrols. Their severity increased daily. Nevertheless, we found two municipals who softened the misery of my parents by showing them kind feeling and giving them hope. I fear they are dead. There was also a sentinel who had a conversation with my aunt through the keyhole. That unfortunate man wept all the time he was near us in the Temple. I know not what became of him; may heaven have rewarded his attachment to his king.
When I took my lessons and my mother prepared extracts for me, a municipal was always there, looking over my shoulder, believing that there must be conspiracy. The newspapers were not allowed us for fear we should know the foreign news; but one day they brought a copy to my father telling him he would find something interesting in it. Oh, horror! he there read that they would make a cannon-ball of his head. The calm and contemptuous silence of my father damped the joy they had shown in bringing him that infernal writing. One evening a municipal, on arriving, uttered many threats and insults, and repeated what we had already heard, that we should all perish if the enemy approached Paris; he added that my brother alone caused him pity, but, being the son of a tyrant, he must die. Such were the scenes that my family had to bear daily.
The Republic was established September 22, they told us joyfully; they also told us of the departure of the foreign army; we could not believe it, but it was true.
At the beginning of October, they took away from us pens, paper, ink and pencils; they searched everywhere, and even harshly. This did not prevent my mother and me from hiding our pencils, which we kept; my father and aunt gave up theirs. The evening of the same day, as my father was finishing supper, they told him to wait; that he was going into another lodging in the Great Tower, and would in future be separated from us. At this dreadful news my mother lost her usual courage and firmness. We parted from him with many tears, still hoping, however, to see him again. The next day they brought our breakfast separately from his; my mother would eat nothing. The municipals, frightened and troubled by her gloomy grief, allowed us to see my father, but only at meals, forbidding us to speak in low tones or in foreign languages, but "aloud and in good French." We then went to dine with my father in great joy at seeing him again; but a municipal was there who perceived that my aunt spoke low to my father, and he made her a scene. At night, my brother being in bed, either my mother or my aunt stayed with him, while the other went with me to sup with my father. In the mornings we stayed with him after breakfast long enough for Cléry to comb our hair, because he was not allowed to come to my mother's room, and this gave us a short time longer to be with my father. We went to walk together daily at midday.
Manuel came to see my father and took away from him harshly his cordon rouge (order of Saint-Louis), and assured him that none of those who had been at the Temple, excepting Mme. de Lamballe, had perished. He made Cléry, Tison, and his wife take an oath to be faithful to the nation. A municipal, coming in one evening, woke my brother roughly to see if he was there; this was the only moment of anger which I saw my mother show. Another municipal told my mother that it was not Pétion's purpose to have my father die, but to shut him up for life with my brother in the castle of Chambord. I do not know what object that man had in giving us this information; we never saw him again. My mother was now lodged on the floor above my father's apartment in the great Tower, and my brother slept in my father's chamber, also Cléry and a municipal guard. The windows were secured by iron bars and shutters; the chimneys smoked much.
Here is how the days of my parents were passed. My father rose at seven o'clock and prayed to God till eight. Then he dressed, and so did my brother, till nine, when they came to breakfast with my mother. After breakfast, my father gave my brother lessons until eleven o'clock; the latter played till midday, when we all went to walk together, no matter what the weather was, because the guard, which was changed at that hour, wished to see us and be certain of our presence in the Tower; the walk lasted till two o'clock, when we dined. After dinner my father and mother played backgammon or piquet, or, to speak more correctly, pretended to play so as to be able to say a few words to each other. At four o'clock my mother went up with us to her own room and took my brother, [Page 253] because the king usually went to sleep at that hour. At six my brother went down. My father made him study and play till supper-time. At nine o'clock, after that meal, my mother undressed him quickly and put him to bed. We went up then to our room, but the king did not go to bed till eleven o'clock. My mother did a great deal of tapestry-work, and made me study and often read aloud. My aunt prayed to God; she read many books of piety; often the queen begged her to read them aloud.
The newspapers were now returned to us in order that we might see the departure of the foreigners and read the horrors about the king of which they were full. A municipal said to us one day: "Mesdames, I announce to you good news; many of the émigrés, those traitors, have been taken; if you are patriots you will rejoice." My mother, as usual, said not a word and did not even seem to hear him; often her contemptuous calmness and her dignified bearing awed these men; it was rarely to her that they addressed themselves.
The Convention came for the first time to see the king. The members who composed the deputation asked him if he had any complaints to make; he said no, he was satisfied, so long as he was with his family. Cléry complained that they did not pay the dealers who provided for the Temple. Chabot answered: "La nation n'est pas à un écu près." The deputies present were Chabot, Dupont, Drouet, and Lecointe-Puyraveau. They came back, after dinner, and asked the same questions. The next day Drouet came back alone and asked the queen if she had any complaints to make. My mother made him no answer. Some days later, as we were at dinner, the guards threw themselves roughly on Cléry and ordered him to follow them to the tribunal. Not long before, Cléry, coming down the staircase with a municipal, met a young man of his acquaintance who was on guard; they said good-day to each other and shook hands; the municipal thought that wrong and arrested the young man. It was to appear with him before the tribunal that Cléry was now taken. My father asked that he should return; the municipals assured him that he would not return; nevertheless he was back at midnight. He asked the king's pardon for his past conduct, which my father's manner, the exhortations of my aunt, and the sufferings of my relations made him change; after that he was very faithful.
My father fell ill with a heavy cold; they granted him a doctor and his apothecary. The Commune was uneasy; it had bulletins every day of his health, which was soon reestablished. The whole family were ill of this cold; but my father was more ill than the rest.
The Commune changed on the 2d of December. The new municipals came to inspect my father and his family at ten o'clock at night. Some days later they issued an order to turn Tison and Cléry out of our apartments and to take away from us knives, scissors, and all sharp instruments; they also ordered that our dishes should be tasted before they were served to us. The search was made for the sharp instruments, and my mother and I gave up our scissors.
December 11th we were made very anxious by the beating of drums and the arrival of a guard at the Temple. My father came with my brother to breakfast. At eleven o'clock Chambon and Chaumette, one the mayor, the other the public prosecutor of the Commune of Paris, and Colombeau their clerk, went to my father's apartment. There they informed him of a decree of the Convention which ordered him to be brought to its bar to be interrogated. They requested him to send my brother to my mother; but not having with them the decree of the Convention, they kept my father waiting two hours, so that he did not start till one o'clock, in the mayor's carriage, with Chaumette and Colombeau; the carriage was escorted by municipals on foot. My father observing that Colombeau bowed to many persons, asked him if they were all his friends; to which he answered: "They are the brave citizens of August 10th, whom I never see without joy."
I shall not speak of my father's conduct before the Convention; all the world knows it; his firmness, his gentleness, his kindness, his courage, amid assassins thirsting for his blood, are traits which will never be forgotten and which the most remote posterity will admire.
The king returned at six o'clock to the Tower of the Temple. We had been in a state of anxiety which it is impossible to express. My mother made every effort with the municipals who guarded her to learn what was happening; it was the first time that she deigned to question them. These men would tell her nothing, and it was only after my father's return that we heard the facts. As soon as he had returned she asked urgently to see him; she even sent to Chambon to ask it, but received no reply. My brother spent the night in her room; he had no bed, she gave him hers and remained up all night in a gloom so great that we did not like to leave her, but she forced us to go to bed, my aunt and me. The next day she again asked to see my father and to read the journals to learn about his trial; she insisted that at least, if she might not see my father, permission should be granted to my brother and me. This request was taken to the Council general; the newspapers were refused; they permitted my brother and me to see my father, but only on condition that we should be absolutely separated from my mother. They informed my father of this, and he said that, however great his pleasure might be in seeing his children, the great business in which he was now engaged would not allow him to occupy himself with his son, and that his daughter must not leave her mother. They then brought my brother's bed into my mother's room.
The Convention came to see my father; he asked for counsel, ink, paper, and razors with which to shave; all of which were granted to him. MM. de Malesherbes, Tronchet, and Desèze, his counsel, came to him; he was often obliged, in order to speak to them without being heard, to go with them into the little tourelle. He no longer went into the garden, neither did we; he heard no news of us, nor we of him, unless through the municipals, and then with difficulty. I had trouble in my foot, and my father, hearing of it, grieved about it with his customary kindness, and inquired carefully about my condition. My family found in this Commune a few charitable men, who, by their kind feeling, soothed our torture; they assured my mother that my father would not be put to death, that his case would be sent to the primary assemblies, which would certainly save him. Alas! they deceived themselves, or from pity endeavoured to deceive my mother. On the 26th of December, Saint-Stephen's day, my father made his will, because he expected to be murdered that day on his way to the bar of the Convention. He went there, nevertheless, with his usual calmness, and left to M. Desèze the care of his defence. He went at eleven and returned at three o'clock.
On the 18th of January, 1793, the day on which the verdict was given, the municipals entered the king's room at eleven o'clock, saying they had orders not to let him out of sight. He asked if his fate were decided; they answered no. The next morning M. de Malesherbes came to tell him that his sentence was pronounced. "But, sire," he added, "those wretches are not yet masters; all honest men will now come forward to save Your Majesty or perish at your feet." "M. de Malesherbes," said my father, "that would compromise many persons and bring civil war into France. I would rather die. I beg you to order them from me to make no movement to save me; the king does not die in France." After this last conference he was not allowed to see his counsel; he gave the municipals a note asking to see them, and complaining of the restraint he was under in being watched incessantly; no attention was paid to this.
Sunday, January 20, Garat, minister of justice, came to notify him that his sentence of death would be executed on the morrow; my father listened with courage and religion. He asked a respite of three days, to know what would become of his family, and to obtain a Catholic confessor. The respite was refused. Garat assured my father that there was no charge against his family and they would all be sent out of the country. He asked for a confessor, the Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont, whose address he gave. Garat brought him. The king dined as usual, which surprised the municipals, who expected that he would wish to kill himself.
We learned the sentence pronounced upon my father on that Sunday, the 20th, from the news criers, who came to shout it under our windows. At seven in the evening, a decree of the Convention arrived, permitting us to go to my father; we hurried there and found him much changed. He wept for sorrow over us, and not from fear of death; he related his trial to my mother, excusing the wretches who caused his death; he told her that it was proposed to appeal to the primary assemblies, but he opposed it, because that measure would bring trouble into the State. He then gave religious instruction to my brother, told him above all to pardon those who were putting him to death, and gave him his blessing; also to me. My mother ardently desired that we should pass the night with him; he refused, making her feel that he had need of tranquillity. She begged him at least to let us come the next morning; he granted that to her; but as soon as we were gone he told the guard not to let us come again, because our presence pained him too much. He remained after that with his confessor, went to bed at midnight, and slept till five o'clock, when he was wakened by the drums. At six o'clock, the Abbé Edgeworth said mass, at which my father took the Communion.
He started about nine o'clock; as he went down the stairway he gave his will to a municipal; he also gave him a sum of money which M. de Malesherbes had brought to him, and requested the man to return it; but the municipals kept it for themselves. He next met a jailer, whom he had reproved rather sharply the evening before, and said to him: "Matthieu, I am sorry to have hurt you." He read the prayers for the dying on the way. Arriving at the scaffold, he wished to speak to the people, but Santerre prevented it by making the drums beat; the few words he was able to say were heard by a few persons only. He then removed his clothing himself, his hands were bound by his own handkerchief, and not with a rope. At the moment when he was about to die the abbé said to him: Fils de Saint-Louis, montez au ciel "Son of Saint-Louis, ascend to heaven."
He received the death-blow at ten minutes past ten in the morning of January 21, 1793. Thus perished Louis XVI. King of France, aged thirty-nine years, five months, and three days, having reigned eighteen years. He had been in prison five months and eight days.
Such was the life of the king, my father, during his rigorous captivity, in which nothing was seen but piety, grandeur of soul, kindness, gentleness, courage, patience in supporting the most infamous treatment, the most horrible calumnies; mercy in pardoning with all his heart his murderers; love of God, of his family, of his peoplea love of which he gave proofs with his last breath and for which he has gone to receive his reward in the bosom of an all-powerful and merciful God. |
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