Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser

Author:Antonia Fraser [Fraser, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Biography, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780385489492
Google: qX8zwbVwz0cC
Amazon: 0736683089
Goodreads: 17157
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2001-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

The solemn High Mass that would precede the inaugural meeting of the Estates General at Versailles was to be held on 4 May. At various levels, Marie Antoinette’s gloomy presentiments were now beginning to be fulfilled. On 26 March the King himself was nearly killed taking the air on the leads of the roof at Versailles, when a ladder on which he was leaning gave way; he was only saved from plunging to his death by the prompt action of a workman.*69 The Queen herself was beginning to spend more and more time alone in her private cabinet, according to the Saxon envoy, Count Salmour, who, because his mother had been a favoured member of the Austrian imperial household, had been immediately accepted as an intimate.23

Then, in late April, a serious riot broke out in Paris, named after the wallpaper manufacturer Réveillon whose supposed decision to cut wages brought it about. Obviously such an action was as fire to tinder in a time of violently rising prices; in fact it was rumour and misunderstanding rather than Réveillon’s actions that caused the revolt. Nevertheless 300 people were killed before the riot was dispersed by troops. Apart from the loss of life, the Réveillon riot had the serious consequence of persuading the government that the people of Paris were becoming unmanageable, while the people themselves saw the government as ready to use military action against them.24

Six days later, the whole royal family were due to exhibit themselves publicly in a procession through the town of Versailles. The route between Paris and Versailles became like a boulevard on a fine day, it was so crowded with traffic. Marie Antoinette sent for Léonard—this was not an occasion for his deputy, le beau Julian—to dress her hair grandly enough for the court dress she had to wear. He attested to her sadness on that occasion: “Come, dress my hair, Léonard, I must go like an actress, exhibit myself to a public that may hiss me.” He found her physically bowed in private, her bosom sunken and her arms thin. The next day, however, an American observer new to the scene, the American Gouverneur Morris, put a different gloss on her dramatic style: “She looks with contempt on the scene in which she acts a Part and seems to say: for the present I submit but I shall have my Turn.”25

Morris—his forename Gouverneur came from his Huguenot ancestry—had arrived in Paris in February, in pursuit of a contract for imported tobacco. Trained as a lawyer (he had assisted in the final wording of the United States Constitution), he was to prove an important and a lively witness in the events that followed. A foreigner from a republican country, Morris was still able to view the Queen with humanity, in a way that it seemed many of the French had forgotten: “I see only the Woman and it seems unmanly to break a Woman with unkindness!”26 Most of the spectators, lacking Morris’s chivalry, saw a woman indeed,

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