Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [100]
In the Assembly, the radicals grew bolder. They attacked the church and took its riches. They attacked the émigrés. Nobles who’d left France were declared traitors and their lands and possessions seized. Those who’d stayed also came under suspicion. Clever Orléans renamed the Palais-Royal the Palais Égalité. He renamed himself Philippe Égalité. He became a deputy, renounced his noble title, sent his eldest sons to fight the Prussians. It bought him a little time.
1791 became 1792. Spring came again, and with it more unrest. In the west country, people rebelled against the revolution. They threatened civil war. In June the king refused to sign orders to garrison twenty thousand troops in Paris—troops that could protect the city from foreign invaders. It was put about that he welcomed an invasion, for it would help him save his throne. Parisians, angered anew, marched on the Tuileries. They broke into the king’s chambers, shook sabers and pistols at him, and forced him to wear a liberty bonnet. They berated him for hours, but he stood fast and brave. At six o’clock the mayor of Paris finally arrived and persuaded the crowd to leave.
But before he did, it had felt to me as if the fall of Versailles was happening all over again. I was there, back at my job as valet to Louis-Charles. When the mob began streaming in, the queen had told her guards to take Louis-Charles and Marie-Thérèse to her bedchamber and lock them in. She told me to go with them. I played with Louis-Charles throughout the day as Marie-Thérèse did her needlework. I did my best to show the children a face both cheerful and unconcerned—all while expecting the mob to break down the door at any second and murder us all.
In July, the Prussian Duke of Brunswick promised that if there was another assault on the king, all of Paris would pay for it, and dearly. His words were printed in every newspaper for us to read, and talked about on every street corner, and we knew they were no idle threat, for his armies were daily advancing through France. Even so, Paris was not cowed. On August 10, spurred on by the hot words of Danton, maddened by the howlings of the gutter press, the people attacked the Tuileries again.
I had not gone back to the Palais the night of the ninth. I was afraid for Louis-Charles and begged to be allowed to stay with him. Alarm bells had been ringing throughout the night, calling together the people of Paris. I heard them and again I remembered Versailles and how the fishwives had run shouting into the palace with murder in their hearts.
The king heard them, too. His own troops were mobilized and the palace fortified, but by morning he could see that it was hopeless. All of Paris had come out to march against him. I dressed Louis-Charles quickly and got him breakfast and then we were hurried out of his rooms, and out of the palace, to the Assembly House.
The king had decided to seek sanctuary for himself and his family with the Assembly, and its deputies, after some consideration, gave it to them—by confining them in the Temple, an ancient and ugly stone fortress.
I was ordered to go with them, as manservant to the king and Louis-Charles. I helped make up their rooms that night. I put sheets on their beds, served them a hasty supper, and then again refused to leave them, for I had heard the gunfire at the Tuileries and knew it was not so far from there to the Temple. I slept on the floor next to Louis-Charles’ bed. Someone offered me nightclothes but I did not take them. I said I wished to be dressed and ready for whatever might occur, but the truth was I could hardly undress in that place. The other servants, or a guard, would find out I was no boy. They would haul me off to the warden. He would know I was a spy and then I would find myself in prison, too.
By the time I did go back to the Palais, late the next night, I was certain the violence was ended. The Tuileries had been taken. The king’s guard had been slaughtered. The king himself