Louis heard them. He said calmly: ‘My people wish to see me. They must not be disappointed.’

‘Do not be afraid, Sire,’ said a member of the National Guard. ‘Remember, Sire, they have always loved you.’

Louis took the man’s hand and placed it on his heart. ‘Feel if it beats more quickly than usual,’ he said.

And the soldier was amazed, for the King’s heart-beats were quite steady.

Elisabeth was with him. There was one fear in Louis’ mind. ‘Do not let them find the Queen,’ he whispered.

Antoinette had hurried to her husband’s apartments but was told to keep away.

‘I will be with my husband,’ she said.

‘It is unwise, Madame. Your presence will inflame the people against him. Wait here in the Council chamber, while the King talks to them.’

She had the children with her; at such moments Antoinette had little fear for herself because all her alarm was for them.

Into the King’s apartments the mob had burst. They paused and looked at Louis and Elisabeth who stood side by side, outwardly calm.

Many of them had never seen the royal family before, and they immediately mistook Elisabeth for Antoinette.

‘The Austrian woman!’ they cried.

Elisabeth had one thought. She believed they had come to murder Antoinette, and she stepped forward crying: ‘Yes. I am the Austrian woman. You have come to kill me. Do so quickly … and go.’

One of the guards said: ‘It is not the Queen. It is Madame Elisabeth.’

The mob fell back. They had turned their attention to Louis, and two of the guards escorted Elisabeth from the room.

Once again that complete calm of the King baffled them. If he had shown one sign of fear, one sign of haughty rancour, they would have fallen upon him and done him to bloody death. But the benign calm puzzled them. They stood back a little. They could only growl: ‘A bas le veto!’

One or two of the guards had placed themselves beside Louis. ‘Citizens,’ one cried, ‘recognise the King. Respect him. The law demands it. We shall die rather than let any harm befall him.’

A butcher stepped forward. ‘Listen to us, Louis Capet,’ he cried. ‘You are a traitor. You have deceived us. Take care! We are tired of being your playthings.’

‘Down with the veto,’ shouted the crowd.

‘My people,’ said Louis, ‘I cannot discuss the veto with you.’

‘You shall! You shall!’ cried the crowd, and one or two men advanced threateningly.

Louis did not flinch. He stood on a stool and addressed them. ‘My people, I shall do what the Constitution demands of me, but I cannot discuss the veto with you.’

One of the men pushed forward his pike on which he had stuck the red Phrygian cap which was the symbol of liberty. Louis, with one of those inspired gestures which came to him naturally at such times of danger, took the cap and placed it on his head.

They stared at him. Someone cried: ‘Long live the King!’ The hard faces relaxed. Louis had once more saved his life.


* * *

The mob had broken into the Council chamber in their search for the Queen.

They found her there. She was standing erect behind the table. Madame Royale was beside her; and on the table sat the Dauphin. Antoinette had turned his face towards herself so that he should not see the mob. Several ladies stood with her, including the Princesse de Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel.

A group of loyal guards stood about the table.

There was a shriek of delight. ‘The Austrian woman!’ Here she was at last. The woman of a hundred fabulous stories, the woman who had lived the most scandalous life of any woman in the world – according to the rumours rife all over the country. Antoinette – l’Autrichienne.

And there she stood, pale, handsome, looking beyond them as though they did not exist, showing no twitch of lips or eyes which might have betrayed the slightest nervousness.

It was the demeanour of the royal family which baffled the crowds whenever they met it. The sight of her standing there, the children beside her, must make the most sanguinary revolutionary pause. Madame Royale, so pretty, so charming, so gentle, so clearly adored this woman of a thousand evil rumours. The little boy – their own Dauphin – was clinging to her for protection.

But they must not forget that she was Antoinette.

They shouted insults and obscenities. Several of them held miniature gallows made of wood, from which dangled rag dolls. Cards were attached to these on which was written in red letters ‘Antoinette à la lanterne!’

A tricolor rosette was thrown at her. The Queen looked at it disdainfully as it fell on the table. ‘Take it,’ someone screamed.

‘Oh, take it, Mama, please,’ whispered Madame Royale; and to soothe her daughter, Antoinette placed it in her hair.

‘A cap of liberty for the Dauphin!’ cried another.

‘No,’ said the Queen.

‘Madame, it is unwise to refuse,’ murmured one of the guards; and a woman stepped up and crammed the cap onto the Dauphin’s head.

He began to cry, for the cap stank horribly, and it had slipped down over his face.

Fortunately one of the revolutionaries, seeing that the little boy was in danger of suffocation advanced and removed the cap.

Red-faced and gasping, the little boy flung himself into his mother’s arms.

Meanwhile the crowds filled the room, wrecking the furnishings, shouting insults, only kept from attacking the Queen by the fixed bayonets of the guards.

The heat of that day was intense; and the stench of the sweating bodies nauseated Antoinette. For three hours she was stared at and threatened; and every moment of that period was pregnant with danger.

A woman forced her way to the table and, disregarding the soldiers’ bayonets, began to repeat some of the hideous stories she had heard of the Queen; she called the Dauphin and his sister bastards; she knew she was safe because, if the guards so much as touched her or any one of the mob, the crowd would tear them to pieces.

The Queen leaned forward suddenly. ‘What have I done to you?’ she asked softly. ‘Have you ever seen me before? They have deceived you about me. I am the wife of your King, and the mother of your Dauphin. I am French as you are French. Tell me what wrong I have done you.’

‘You have caused misery to the nation,’ said the woman.

‘That is what you have been told. I would never consciously harm France. I was happy when the people loved me.’

The woman’s fierce expression collapsed suddenly.

She stared at Antoinette and burst into tears.

‘You see,’ said Antoinette, ‘when you come face to face with me you know these tales of me to be false.’

There was a short silence. Then the weeping woman dropped a curtsy before she was dragged back into the crowd.

‘She is drunk,’ they cried and the vilifying continued. ‘Antoinette à la lanterne!’ The Queen continued to stand. The Dauphin, his face hidden from the horror behind him, clutched at the lace of her bodice with hot and fearful hands.

But some fire had gone out of the mob. Their cries were less fierce. To see her there, so haughty, so very much the Queen, made it impossible for them to accept the lies which had been told of her.

And, after three hours of this terrifying ordeal, a shout went up that the Mayor of Paris had arrived with a detachment of the National Guard.

The crowd dispersed; and there was quiet in the pillaged Palace of the Tuileries.


* * *

She wrote that night to Fersen: ‘I am still alive, though it seems I am so by a miracle. The ordeal was terrible. But you must not be anxious about me. Have faith in my courage to live through these terrible days.’


* * *

The men of the south were marching into Paris. Ragged, unkempt, and fiercer than the men of the north, these were the men of Marseilles, and their aim was to depose the King and end the monarchy for ever.

Relentless, ruthless, as they marched they sang a song which had been composed by one of the officers, and which they had adopted as the hymn of the revolution.

Into the capital they came, welcomed by the Jacobins, cheered as they assembled in the Champs Elysées.

And on the lips of all was the hymn of revolution:‘Allons, enfants de la patrie,


Le jour de gloire est arrivé,


Contre nous, de la tyrannie,


Le couteau sanglant est levé …’

The terror of life at the Tuileries had increased. There were more spies in the household. Each night mobs gathered outside the Palace and shouted threats at those within.

Antoinette wrote often to her lover. Fersen was desperate; he travelled from Sweden to Brussels, spending long hours at the Courts doing all in his power to urge the monarchs of Europe to unite and go to the aid of Louis and Antoinette. The Duke of Brunswick, the commander of the Austrian and Prussian armies, was preparing to cross the frontier. Fersen, irritated by the delay of this old soldier who refused to be hurried, was terrified that the Queen would be murdered before help reached her. He urged Brunswick to issue a manifesto threatening Paris with destruction if the royal family came to any harm at its hands.

The people congregated in the Place du Carrousel, in the Palais Royal and the Champs Elysées – indeed any spot where they could gather to talk about the manifesto.


* * *

The hot weather continued and the tension increased. Elisabeth and the Princesse de Lamballe stayed with the Queen even during the night.