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International Women’s Day – Lucile Desmoulins

8 Mar

As it is International Women’s Day, I’d like to post about one of my all time heroines, Lucile Desmoulins.

Anne Lucile Philippa Laridon-Duplessis was born in Paris in 1771 to a rich financier Étienne-Claude Duplessis-Laridon and his wife Anne-Françoise-Marie Boisdeveix. She had one elder sister, Adèle, who was widowed at an early age and then returned home to live with her parents. Lucile is known to us through her copious and highly romantic journals and was clearly an imaginative, highly strung rather mutinous girl who delighted in throwing her family into uproar by falling in love with one of her mother’s most ardent admirers Camille Desmoulins, a journalist who was ten years her senior and had a bit of a reputation for philandering.

Camille and Lucile met for the first time when she was a very young girl, while she was walking with her family in the gardens of the Palais du Luxembourg on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the early 1780s. Camille was more interested in her mother, Madame Duplessis at this stage but Lucile lost her heart to him and in time he fell in love with her too, which culminated in his asking her father for her hand in marriage in 1787. He was refused.

‘As to Lucile’s own feelings, it is somewhat hard to fathom them ; indeed, at this time she did not know her own heart. She was scarcely more than a child, and, like many young girls, inclined to be morbid. Nevertheless, she was no fool. She had opinions and views of her own. Some of her notebooks and diaries have been preserved, and they show that she was widely read for those days and also accustomed to think for herself.

Sitting up in bed, whilst her family slept, Lucile scribbled down, half furtively, her thoughts and dreams in these little exercise books. To be sure, her ideas are mainly those of her idol, Rousseau, but there is a strain of originality as well. It is when she is most coloured by her master that one likes her least.

In common with other girls, before and since, she thinks that she will never marry, she doubts her capacity for love. She is a stone, she says, cold as ice, — at the advanced age of sixteen ! She imagines that she hates men, that she is a being set apart.

It is not until 1789 that we begin to see the dawn of a new feeling, and even then it is only an idea which she loves. It is impossible to say when the idea materialised into the shape of shabby, fascinating Camille Desmoulins.

Nevertheless, Lucile is learning that she does not hate one particular man. Later, she will know that she loves him well enough to live for him — well enough to die for him.

It is a quaint, pathetic little manuscript, that early diary of Lucile’s ; a manuscript to bring a smile to the lips and tears to the eyes.

So the pretty, wilful girl passed her days and nights in dreams and self-analysis, while the real romance of her life was waiting for her, close at hand, in the person of the impecunious young lawyer, who lived in such poor apartments in the Hotel Pologne.’ – Violet Methley.

After Camille’s infamous involvement in the fall of the Bastille, Lucile’s father eventually gave his consent to their marriage and they were duly married on 24 December 1790 at Saint Sulpice in Paris with the groom’s best friend Robespierre as a witness. Lucile, just twenty years old wore a pink silk dress and garters embroidered with forget me nots and was much admired.

‘Camille had watched Lucile grow from a beautiful child into a still more beautiful girl — watched her, scarcely daring to hope that some day he might win her for his own.

Now she was twenty years old, a woman with a woman’s mind and will, in spite of her fragile and childish appearance. As to her loveliness there is no un-certainty. All the writers of that day who mention

Lucile Desmoulins speak of her beauty with enthusiasm. Jules Claretie, who had himself heard her appearance described by eye-witnesses, says that ” she was of small stature, and very graceful, with beautiful fair hair, like a portrait by Greuze.”

A contemporary writer, one Moreau de Jonnes, tells us also that ” she was an adorable little blonde,” but it appears that although her hair and complexion were strikingly fair, Lucile had dark eyes. Her own mother said of her that ” her eyes were not blue, but black, like her father’s.

Probably Lucile Desmoulins’ best-known portrait is that by Boilly in the Musee Carnavelet. This, and other existing pictures, certainly represent her as charmingly pretty, but, judging only by these, one might imagine that Camille’s wife was of the wax- doll type in body and mind. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lucile proved again and again that she possessed character, and character of a very distinct and definite quality. We have already seen something of what she was as a wilful, charming girl, indulged by her parents and full of immature dreams and fancies. Under the strain and stress of her bitter- sweet married life, Lucile was to develop quickly. There was a strong soul and a brave spirit in that dainty Dresden-china girl, who, at first sight, would seem to need a landscape by Watteau as her fittest frame.’ – Violet Methley.

The young couple set up home on the Place de l’Odéon in the Cordeliers district of Paris and lived quite lavishly thanks to Lucile’s dowry of 100,000 francs. Their son and only child, Horace was born on 6 June 1792 and had Robespierre as his godfather.

Stanislas Fréron, who would later be a lover of Pauline Bonaparte was a close friend of the couple and frequently stayed with them at their country house at Bourg-la-Reine, just outside Paris. He later left a touchingly sweet description of Lucile and it’s clear that he had a bit of a thing for her as he talks about: ‘the thyme and wild herbs with which Madame Desmoulins’ pretty dimpled hands had fed him‘ and Lucile herself ‘trotting about in her room, gliding over the polished floor, sitting for a moment at her piano, and whole hours in an easy chair, dreaming, giving the reins to her imagination, then making the coffee with a filtering bag, behaving like a sprite, and showing her teeth like a cat.’

In time Camille began to turn against the Terror as championed by  Robespierre
and his own cousins, Saint-Just and Fouquier-Tinville and  sided with Danton,
who dedicated himself to bringing more moderacy to  France. 

This was not a popular move with the Committee of Public Safety  and on 4
April 1794, after an astonishing and dramatic trial, Danton,  Desmoulins and
their followers were guillotined. They were ultimately  condemned by a false
report that Lucile had been inciting her English  and royalist friends to
 overthrow the revolution. Camille was distraught as he went to his death,
 knowing  that his beloved wife, whose miniature and lock of hair he carried
 to the guillotine was certain to be executed as well.

His final letter to her, written at 5am and almost illegible in places thanks to his tear stains, is heart rending in its pathos.

‘…I will dream of you one day, O Lucile! O Annette, as sensible as I was of it, death – which will deliver me from such crimes – is it so great an evil? Adieu Loulou, goodbye life, my soul, my share of divinity on earth. I leave you in the hands of good friends, and all that is virtuous and sensible! Adieu, Lucile! My dear Lucile! Adieu, Horace, Annette. Goodbye father. My life flees before my very eyes. I see once again my Lucile! I see her! My arms hold you tight! My hands bring you into my embrace! And my head, separated from my body, remains with you! I go to my death!’

Lucile was duly arrested and executed on 13 April 1794, aged just twenty three and showing enormous courage.

‘It was with more than calmness that Lucile heard that fate pronounced. She had remained perfectly serene all through the three days’ trial, quietly denying the charges of treason brought against her, yet almost dreading acquittal, so it seemed to the onlookers. When the death sentence was passed upon herself and her companions, a strange, supernatural joy shone in her eyes.

‘What happiness ! ” she cried. ” In a few hours I shall see my Camille again ! ”

And then, so it was said, a spirit of prophecy seemed to come upon the girl, as she turned to her judges. ” In quitting this earth to which love no longer binds me,” she said solemnly, ” I am less to be pitied than you ; for, at your death, which will be infamous, you will be haunted by remorse for what you have done.”

Lucile’s strange exaltation filled her until the end. Those who saw her were amazed at her joyful bearing. Hebert’s widow said to her with bitter self-condemnation : ‘ You are lucky ; nobody speaks ill of you : there is no stain on your character ; you will leave life by the grand staircase.”

When Lucile apologised sweetly to Arthur Dillon (father of Madame de la Tour du Pin) for having aided to bring about his death, the gallant Irishman laughed at her self-reproach. But when he tried to find words for his own sympathy, Lucile interrupted him. “Look at my face,” she said joyfully. ” Is it that of a woman who needs to be comforted ? ”

She was dressed all in white, as though for a bridal, and with a white handkerchief passed over her head and tied under her chin. She seemed a very child, for she had cut off her soft, fair hair, and sent it to her mother with a little note of farewell.

As they waited for the summons to death, the girl’s courage never failed her.

“They have assassinated the best of men,” she said. “If I did not hate them for that, I should bless them for the service they have done me this day.”

She bowed to Dillon almost merrily as she ascended the tumbril ; she talked sweetly and calmly to those who travelled with her along that gloomy road which led to death. Dillon no longer tried to hide his real feelings at the end. ” Long live the King ! ” he cried, as he stood upon the scaffold, and laughed at the outcry of the mob.

Of Lucile no last words are recorded. She had no thought of how her bearing would impress the by- standers, no thought at all beyond the ever-present consciousness that she was about to rejoin Camille. No faintest shadow of doubt dimmed that hope. She passed lightly up the steps of the guillotine, her ” grand staircase,” she lay down as directed upon the plank. Her colour had scarcely changed, and always she smiled — as one sees a child smile at some inward, joyful thought.

Very sure it is that death had lost its sting for Lucile Desmoulins. It is even hard for us to feel thetragedy of it all, since to her it was no such thing, but a very joyous journey which should end in ” lovers’ meetings.”

The tragedy lies here as always with those who were left, those on whom such overwhelming sorrow and loss had descended.’ – Violet Methley.

Her last letter, to her mother (who now had the care of the orphaned two year old Horace), says:

‘Good night, dearest mother. A tear falls from my eye for you. I will go to sleep in the tranquillity of innocence. Lucile.’

My post about visiting the homes of Lucile.

The doomed Princesse Joséph de Monaco

19 Jan

Françoise-Thérèse de Choiseul-Stainville, Princesse Joséph de Monaco is one of my personal obsessions. She is one of those historical figures that I glean random odd facts about from different sources but who will never get her own book. I’m always left looking for more. I’ve been researching her life and times for several years now, ever since I was a teenager actually, when I came across an old French history magazine in a brocante shop in Versailles, which had a feature on her life. I’d love to write a book about her just as soon as I get enough material together but to be honest I don’t know if that will ever happen.

The painting reproduced above is the only one that is freely available online, but no one seems sure who it is by or where it is, although I suspect that it is in the Château de Fontaine-Française in Burgundy. A comment left here a while ago suggested that it might be by the portraitist Angelica Kauffman, which seems plausible.

Detail from a painting featuring Françoise and her elder sister, Marie-Stéphanie with their aunts, the Duchesse de Choiseul and Duchesse de Gramont. Françoise is presumably the small girl in pink. I was very excited when I stumbled on this picture quite by chance a couple of years ago  – the whole painting depicts Françoise’s father, the Comte de Stainville reviewing troops while his family watches. Many thanks to my husband for successfully enlarging the painting for me and cropping out the relevant detail!

Françoise-Thérèse was the daughter of unattractive, rather boorish army officer Jacques Philippe de Choiseul, Comte de Stainville and his beautiful wife, Thérèse de Clermont d’Amboise (born in September 1746) who married on 3 April 1761 in Paris when the groom was forty and his bride barely fifteen. Jacques was the younger brother of the powerful Duc de Choiseul, advisor to Louis XV while Thérèse was the only daughter and heiress of the Marquis de Reynel and his wife Marie-Jacqueline Racine de Jonquoy. Her grandmother was Lady Henriette FitzJames (daughter of the Duke of Berwick-upon-Tweed) so the family were clearly well connected – in fact Thérèse was fortunate enough to grown up at the Château d’Amboise, which at that time belonged to her family.

The match produced two daughters: Marie-Stéphanie on 10 November 1763 and Françoise-Thérèse on 8 December 1766. The marriage was not a happy one and both parties were unfaithful – Madame de Stainville was the long time mistress of her husband’s cousin, the Duc de Lauzun as well as enjoying liaisons with her brother in law, the Duc de Choiseul amongst others.

The Duc de Lauzun, longtime lover of the Comtesse de Stainville and possible father of Françoise. He was also rumoured, with much foundation, to be the son of Françoise’s uncle, the Duc de Choiseul and was certainly treated very much as a nephew by Choiseul’s fearsome sister, Béatrix, Duchesse de Gramont. He was to be guillotined during the Terror.

The Comte de Stainville, as was the custom of the time got away with his various infidelities but Madame la Comtesse was found out when she fell madly in love with the actor and singer Clairval and began to meet with him in her home with little regard for social niceties.

Her downfall is outlined in the memoirs of her lover, Lauzun:

‘Mme. de Stainville meanwhile lived in apparent ease of mind, and her trust seemed to know no limits. The talk of the town at this moment was a fancy-dress ball which the old Marechale de Mirepoix,’ still crazy for pleasure, intended to give at the Hotel de Brancas to the young people of the Court and town.

Twenty-four couples are to perform a ballet which is to be the great feature of the evening. The costumes, all of the rarest magnificence, are borrowed from Eastern lands : there will be Sultanas, Chinese, Indians, Dervishes, Rajahs, what not. The dancers are divided into six sets of four couples each. The Due de Chartres and Mme. d’Egmont will lead the first set, and Mme. de Stainville is to be in it ; her costume is that of a German peasant-girl, and her partner is the Prince d’Henin.

Mme. de Stainville never missed a rehearsal, and was conspicuous for her grace and brilliant beauty. On a certain Tuesday, three days before the ball, a gay supper at Mme. de Valentinois’ brought together all the performers in the famous figure dance; every one was in the highest spirits excepting Mme. de Stainville, who was in the deepest dejection ; her eyes filled constantly with tears, and her friends could not rouse her from her thoughts. The young woman’s depression was only too natural. Her husband, having arrived the day before from Metz, where he was in command, had reproved her for her conduct in a violent scene, and had told her that he intended asserting his rights and placing her in a convent.

What had immediately led to this action cannot be known. It is certain that he had procured a lettre de cachet from his brother, the Due de Choiseul. Mme. de Stainville went home after the supper at Mme. de Valentinois’ full of terrible apprehensions. They were only too well founded. That same night, the night of the 20th-21st January, 1767, at three in the morning, the Comte had his wife placed in a post-chaise, seated himself by her side, and carried her to Nancy, where, armed with the King’s written order, he shut her up for the rest of her days in the Convent of the Filles de Sainte-Marie.

A waiting-maid and a footman who were suspected of having been in their mistress’s confidence were also shut up, she at Sainte-Pelagie and he at Bicetre. There was even a talk of imprisoning Clairval too, but the Due de Choiseul opposed it, that the public might not be deprived of a favourite actor.

All M. de Stainville’s friends had done their utmost to persuade him against such a scandal ; they besought him to have patience, or, if he were bent on carrying out his purpose, at least to choose a better and more fitting moment ; but he would listen to no one.

The scandal was, in fact, tremendous. The young wife, brutally snatched away on the very eve of a ball of which she would have been the queen, was regarded as a victim, and the world had no mercy on him. But he had at least the decency to place all his wife’s fortune in the hands of the guardians of his children.

When M de Stainville’s second daughter (Françoise) was going to be married, the young girl declared she would never consent unless her mother were present at the ceremony. He was forced to yield, and Mme. de Stainville came out of the convent for a few days. By the intervention of the Duchesse de Choiseul she was then invited to return to her family; but she had become very devout, and refused to leave the convent. She died soon after in a frame of exalted piety.‘

Her lover, Lauzun was devastated by her fall from grace but was soon consoled by Lady Sarah Bunbury, one of the famous Lennox sisters. However, her husband was to be immediately dumped by his own mistress, a famous opera dancer who, like the rest of Paris, sided with his unfortunate wife and considered his behaviour beneath contempt.

Françoise’s mother, the Comtesse de Stainville with her sister in law, Béatrix de Choiseul, Duchesse de Gramont and her lover, the Duc de Lauzun.


Françoise’s father, the Comte de Stainville.

The two Stainville girls went to the Abbaye aux Bois convent school on the Rue de Sèvres in Paris although rumours abounded that the younger was not the daughter of the Comte (her mother had been made to solemnly make an oath that Françoise, just a few months old at the time of her mother’s disgrace, was the Comte’s daughter), which may explain why the Choiseul family took little interest in her and refused to see her when they visited her elder sister. The only exception was her aunt by marriage, the kind hearted and much loved Duchesse de Choiseul who was extremely fond of her and made sure that she was included in family visits to Chanteloup, such as on the occasion of her sister’s marriage on 10 October 1778 to a cousin Claude Antoine de Choiseul, who would later succeed their uncle as Duc de Choiseul.

Abbaye Aux Bois school.


Hélène, Princesse de Ligne, friend of Françoise and her sister at school. She wrote at great length about them both in her memoirs.

At this time, Françoise was described as ‘wild’, badly behaved and ignorant and both Choiseul-Stainville girls were considered to be trouble makers and the driving forces behind minor acts of disobedience at their school, to which the elder returned, as was the custom, after her marriage. Their best friend at this time was Hélène Massalska, who married the Prince de Ligne on the 29th July 1777 and who described the elder Choiseul girl, who was her best friend in her memoirs as ‘very pretty’. One of their most notorious pranks was to pour ink into the holy water in the school chapel.

Marie-Stéphanie, Duchesse de Choiseul-Beaupré, sister of Françoise and lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette. Stéphanie was the petted and adored favourite of her family, while her younger sister was always somewhat ignored.

Until Françoise’s arrival at Abbaye aux Bois, after her mother’s downfall, the two sisters had been barely in each other’s company – the elder girl was already well established when Françoise arrived at the school, apparently from a convent elsewhere which makes me wonder if Françoise, who was just a baby when her mother was sent away had in fact accompanied her into exile at Nancy and remained with her until it was considered judicious to remove her and send her to school in Paris.

The two sisters were of markedly different temperments. Hélène recounts that her friend, Stéphanie described her own sister, the  younger Choiseul girl as ‘a mere child ; that she was rather pretty, but did not appear very lively, and she thought her ignorant and badly brought up ; that she had made a great deal of her, but that she had appeared very untamed. She also told me that she was called Mademoiselle de Stainville.’

It seems from this that the sisters had probably never been in each other’s company before Françoise arrived at the school in Paris, which I think confirms that the younger girl had in fact been raised separately by her own mother at the convent in Nancy.

Louise-Honorine, Duchesse de Choiseul. She was very fond of Françoise and took her young daughters in after she was executed.


The Duc de Choiseul, Françoise’s uncle, a red haired lothario who always believed that she was the bastard of his sister in law and one of her lovers.


Béatrix de Choiseul, Duchesse de Gramont. She was known for her caustic wit and snubbed Françoise as she also believed that she was in fact illegitimate. She would later be guillotined during the Terror.

The rumours about Françoise’s parentage did nothing to deter suitors and on 6 April 1782 she was married to Joseph Grimaldi, son of Honoré III Grimaldi, Prince de Monaco and Marie Catherine Brignole-Sale, which was a brilliant match. The young couple were extremely fond of each other and had three daughters together: Honorine, born on 22 April 1784; Athénaïs, born on 22 June 1786 and Delphine, born on 22 July 1788. Sadly, Delphine was to die during infancy. Their births were registered in the Saint Roch district of Paris (now the IV arrondissement).

Françoise’s handsome prince, Joséph de Monaco.

They made their home in an apartment on the lovely, peaceful Rue de Monsieur, which is a short walk away from Prince Joséph’s father’s palace, the Hôtel de Matignon (now official residence of the French President) on the Rue de Varenne. Françoise probably spent a lot of time at the stately Hôtel, with its enormous gardens as her father in law seems to have been extremely fond of her.

The beautiful yellow salon of the Hôtel de Matignon.

The Rue Monsieur in Paris, where Françoise and Joséph lived with their children. I wasn’t sure where it was and came across it quite by chance while walking to the Hôtel de Matignon. I took a stroll down it, enjoying the peaceful calm and the beautiful pale mansions that overlook the road. I don’t know yet what number house, the Monaco couple lived in but there were several aristocratic looking gates with a courtyard and mansion tucked behind so I am guessing it was one of them.

We catch brief glimpses of Françoise in the years before the Revolution – she, along with her sister, the Duchesse de Choiseul-Beaupré are there in the official lists of young ladies presented to Marie Antoinette after their weddings and also on that of ladies of high rank granted permission to sit on a tambour stool in the presence of the Queen – a great honour at this time so clearly both were well established at Versailles.

Françoise doesn’t appear on any lists of ladies in waiting during this period but her sister was one of Marie Antoinette’s attendants. The Queen, of course, would always be fond of the Choiseul family as she saw them as primary movers in the arrangement of her marriage to Louis XVI.

She seems to have belonged to a slightly more rakish set of young aristocrats, counting the lovely Duchesse de Fleury and the Princesse Rosalie de Lubomirska amongst her friends.

Françoise and her dashing young husband, Prince Joseph de Monaco. The couple were reportedly devoted to each other.

Françoise emigrated with her husband after the initial outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 and then travelled Italy with her friend Aimée de Coigny, Duchesse de Fleury while her husband became involved in the uprising in the Vendée. She met with Vigée-Lebrun, who admired her sweet expression. Françoise and Aimée were present in Naples when Madame Vigée-Lebrun painted Lady Hamilton as a Sibyl. Vigée-Lebrun last encountered the Princesse at the ceremony of the marriage of the Doge and the sea in Venice.

Aimée de Coigny, Duchesse de Fleury, whose cousin shared a room at school with Hélène de Ligne and Françoise’s sister. Aimée and Françoise travelled Europe together before returning to France during the Terror. Aimée was also imprisoned and became, unwittingly, muse to André Chénier, who immortalised her in his poem La Jeune Captive.

The principality of Monaco signed a treaty with France on 21 September 1791 but on 14 February 1794 Monaco was annexed to France, with disastrous results for Françoise, who up until that date had been regarded as a foreigner in France and was therefore free to travel as much as she liked. As soon as she became a French citizen again in 1793 she immediately returned to Paris in order to avoid being denounced as an emigré and losing her property and also to be reunited with her daughters, who were being cared for by her aunt, the Duchesse de Choiseul, however it was too late and she was arrested in Paris while trying to regularise her situation. She presented forged residence papers and was released, at which point it was discovered that her husband had joined the royalist insurrection in the Vendée. Another warrant was issued for Françoise’s arrest and she was hidden by a friend, Rollet d’Avaux in the fashionable convent school Panthémont on the Rue de Grenelle.

The women’s exercise yard of the Conciergerie. Françoise was held here before her execution.

She was eventually arrested in the Winter of 1793-4 and sent to the Petit Force, one of the very worst Parisian prisons. She was later transfered to the Anglaises, which was much more comfortable and where she gained a reputation for sweet natured optimism in the face of almost certain death and then later moved on, thanks to pulling some strings, to Saint-Pélagie.

The Princesse de Créquy, a fellow prisoner there, was to describe Françoise in her memoirs:

‘Je fus enchantée de retrouver là Mme Joseph de Monaco, qui, comme je l’espérais bien, me fut d’une grande ressource. Quoi qu’elle eût naturellement de sages pensées, des idées religieuses et des dispositions charitables, elle avait l’esprit très malin. Avec l’imagination gaie, elle avait le cœur triste ; c’est la plus aimable espèce de gens ; mais bien qu’elle eût acquis assez de connaissance du monde et du cœur humain, elle n’avait aucune expérience de certaines choses vulgaires, et je lui disais toujours : Ma pauvre princesse, vous êtes de ces femmes qui croient que les diamans naissent dans les chatons et les fruits dans les corbeilles.

Je me souviens qu’elle avait, à portée de voix, du côté de sa chambre, une famille vocale et instrumentale admirablement experte et qui lui faisait souffrir le martyre ; elle ne pouvait s’expliquer une disposition qui n’avait rien d’analogue à ses habitudes passées, car elle avait eu pendant toute sa vie la passion contraire à cette aversion-là.

Je me suis souvent demandé pourquoi la musique légère m’est insupportable, tandis que la musique qui prie et la musique qui pleure ont beaucoup de charme pour moi ?

Mme de Monaco me dit un jour, et tout uniment, comme si de rien n’était : — La musique me fait un mal affreux depuis que je ne suis plus jeune. Elle me cause des émotions sans me donner des affections.

Si Mme de Monaco avait connu les choses de la terre aussi bien qu’elle distinguait les choses du cœur, on n’aurait jamais vu plus habile femme. Elle a toujours été bienveillante et bienfaisante ; mais elle n’était pas restée capable d’amitié, parce qu’elle avait éprouvé trop d’amour et trop souvent. Il en est pour les sentimens comme de la grammaire, où le superlatif exclut toujours le comparatif.’

Despite being so harmless she was denounced by a prison spy, Ferrières-Sauvebeuf and then promptly sentenced to death. The Princesse immediately responded by informing the authorities that she was pregnant – pregnant women were not executed until their children were born so this postponed execution.

The Princesse was subjected to the indignity of an examination by a doctor Enguchard, an apothecary Quinquet and ‘the widow Prioux’, presumably a midwife. Their official report states: ‘ Nous avons examiné et visité la nommée Thérèse Stainville, épouse de Joseph Monaco, âgée de 26 ans, déclarée être enceinte de deux mois et demi. Notre examen ne nous a fourni aucun signe de grossesse. Ce 8 thermidor, l’an 2® de la République une et indivisible, (signé) Enguchard, Quinquet, veuve Prioux.‘

She wrote this letter to Fouquier-Tinville after they had left:

“Citizen, I wish to inform you that I am not pregnant. I wanted to tell you. Though I can no longer hope you will come, I beg you do so nonetheless. I did not soil my mouth with this lie out of fear of death, nor to avoid it, but to give me one day more, so that I might cut my own hair, and not have it done at the hands of the executioner. It is the only legacy that I can leave to my children; at least it must be pure.

Choiseul-Stainville-Joseph-Grimaldi-Monaco, foreign princess, and dying from the injustice of French judges.“

She then removed a pane of glass from the window, plaited her long blonde hair and used the glass to cut it off before writing to her children:

“My children, here is my hair. I have postponed my death by one day, not out of fear, but because I wanted myself to cut off these sad remains of me so that you might have them. I did not want it to be left to the hands of the executioner and these were my only means. I have spent one more day in this agony, but I (crossed out) do not complain.

I ask that my hair be put under glass, covered with black crepe, put away for most of the year and brought out only three or four times a year in your bedchamber so that you may have before you the remains of your unfortunate mother who died loving you and who regrets her life only because she can no longer be useful to you.

I commend you to your grandfather: if you see him, tell him that my thoughts are with him and that he stands in place of everything for you, and you, my children, take care of him in his old age and make him forget his misfortunes.“

To her children’s governess, Citoyenne Chevenoy she wrote:

“I have already written to you and I am writing to you again to commend my children to you. When you receive this note, I shall be no more, but let my memory make you take pity on my unhappy children. That is the only feeling that they can now inspire.

I leave you, as a souvenir, the ring in which my children’s names were inscribed and which you should have received by now – it is the only thing at my disposal to give. Let Louise know the reason why I postponed my death, that she may not suspect me of weakness.“

Françoise’s aunt, the Duchesse de Choiseul, who was also imprisoned during the Terror but would escape with her life and take care not only of Françoise’s two daughters but also the children of other friends who had been guillotined. This despite the loss of much of her fortune and being forced to live in drastically reduced circumstances in Paris.

Louise was a reference to her beloved aunt, the Duchesse de Choiseul, who was also a prisoner at this point but would be released soon afterwards and take charge of the two Grimaldi girls Athénaïs and Honorine until their father returned from England a year later.

The delay meant that the Princesse was in what was to be the very last such tumbril from the Conciergerie on the afternoon of 9 Thermidor. She made sure to apply extra rouge before she left, so as to hide any signs of paleness that may be construed as fear. As she stepped out, blinking in the harsh sunlight into the cour de Mai by the Palais du Justice, she was seen to display ‘righteous indignation’ at her fate and remarked to the porter, as she handed him the packet containing her hair and the letters she had written during the previous night: ‘Swear to me, Monsieur, in the presence of these honest men, whom the same fate awaits, that you will carry out for me this last service, which I expect of a human being.’ She then turned to the Comtesse de Narbonne’s maid, who was to die with her and who was hysterical with fear and said: ‘Courage, my dear friend! Courage! Only crime can show weakness!’

The cortège was held up by excited crowds in the wake of Robespierre’s fall that day but the executions continued nonetheless. She was the last person to be guillotined that day and as Olivier Blanc writes: ‘She climbed the steps in her turn. On the platform, her youthful beauty shone in the dazzling July light.‘

After her execution, her body and those of her fellow victims were taken to the cemetery at Picpus and there stripped and dumped into one of two grave pits without any ceremony.

Françoise’s name on the list of guillotine victims that is kept in a small room in the Conciergerie. She is listed next to the Saint-Amaranthe family and Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just.

After her departure, her cell was found to contain: ‘un jupon de bazin blanc garni, deux chemises de femme, une camisolle de taffetas bleu, quatre mouchoirs de poche, une paire de poches, trois serre-tête, un fichu de linon, deux paires de bas de coton, une cravate de soye, un sac à ou- vrage de taffetas vert contenant un tricot avec des aiguilles, un oreiller avec taye garnie.‘

Her hair was delivered to her daughter, Honorine, who later became Marquise de la Tour du Pin and it remains in the possession of her descendants, the Chabrillan family at their château Fontaine-Française. Along with a portrait of the Princesse, it was loaned to the Musée Carnavalet for an exhibition about the French Revolution in 1934 and is reportedly a very beautiful plait.

Bust of Princesse Joseph de Monaco by François Martin. I’m not sure whether the attribution is correct – the bust is signed and dated ’1788′, when the Princesse was twenty two years old so I think that either the date or the attribution is wrong.

After the revolution, Françoise’s daughter Honorine married the Marquis de la Tour du Pin on the 20th July 1803, while Athénaïs married the Marquis de Louvois on the 8th August 1804. Her widower, Prince Joseph was to later marry again to a Frances Rainford.

This is the fifth (eek!) version of this post, I thought I should update it a bit as I am still working on the research for this. I’m hoping one day to be able to properly work on a book about Françoise, Lucile Desmoulins, Rosalie Lubomirska and Émilie de Saint-Amaranthe.

My next book…

18 Jan

I’m working my way through chapter four at the moment, so I guess that I can talk about it now. I’ve become terribly superstitious about my writing lately and had this idea that talking about it prematurely might put a halt to the creative flow or something. Not that it matters really – I am sure that I have read a very sobering statistic somewhere about the ratio of half finished novels mouldering in bottom drawers to gleaming completed manuscripts.

However! The book that I have been hard at work at lately is an eighteenth century re-working of The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton, which just happens to be one of my all time favourite books so I am kind of keen not to butcher it too much. I’ve made changes obviously and in fact although the premise and basic plot are the same, the characters are already starting to deviate from Wharton’s originals and take on their own personalities.

The Buccaneers, of course, is set in America and New York at the end of the nineteenth century and is about a bevy of beautiful American heiresses who are too much on the fringes of upper crust New York society to make suitable matches so they cross the Atlantic in search of husbands, with mixed results. It was clearly inspired by the true stories of fabulously wealthy American girls like Consuelo Vanderbilt, who crossed the Atlantic and married the Duke of Marlborough.

In my book, which starts in 1787, the girls belong to the newly rising wealthy middle classes and after failing to break into Mayfair society, they instead head over the Channel to Paris, where all things English are very much a la mode and it is hoped that they will be enough of a novelty for their lack of noble lineage to be too much of a hinderance. Of course, if they don’t pick up husbands then a bit of Parisian polish wouldn’t go amiss either when they eventually return to London…

I set it in 1787 to coincide with the visit of the Duchesse de Polignac to London and Bath in the Spring of that year, an event which I anticipated would bring the first bit of French glamour into the lives of the four heroines. Of course this means that their introduction to Paris takes place perilously close to the events of Summer 1789 but I think that this will add a dash of drama to the closing chapters and have already laid plans based on this!

Judging by the book so far and my copious notes, I would say that it owes as much to my adored Georgette Heyer (in particular The Nonesuch and A Civil Contract) as it does to Edith Wharton. I love working with all the little details that pertain to class and etiquette, as they are basically at the very heart of the plot so I am spending a lot of time on the subtle nuances like the exact London street that a disgustingly wealthy but aspiring businessman would have lived on at this time or where his wife would have shopped.

I love London, or at least I love certain parts and periods of London if that makes sense? Miss Testvalley, the governess, is an important character in The Buccaneers where she comes from an Italian immigrant family and is a cousin of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In my book, her counterpart is Miss Sidonie Roche, who comes from a French Huguenot family who have settled in Spitalfields, which as you all know is an area that I most particularly adore.

I’m really proud of what I have done so far and really look forward to many happy months working on this book! I twisted my ankle really badly last week so have been trapped on a sofa for over four days now, which is grim but on the plus side it’s meant that I’ve had a bit of extra time to write while my husband waits on the boys and I. Okay, he doesn’t clean the cooker in the way that I like but at least I get a bit more time to escape to Bath in the 1780′s!

Anyway, yes, that’s what I have been working on lately? Would you like to read a little bit? I added a tiny snippet to my post about the Gunning sisters, but you probably missed it so here’s a little bit more:

‘They had arrived at South Parade, which was lined on both sides by a terrace of imposing mansions and turned down it to walk down towards the river. Six large travelling carriages had just pulled up outside one of the houses and the two girls stopped to watch as a liveried footman sprang forward to let down the steps then pull open the door of the first, a splendidly gleaming yellow and black vehicle pulled by a team of sprightly chestnut horses.

‘Now, if I am not mistaken…’ Venetia murmured, as he helped down a small, thin woman dressed in a tight pink velvet travelling dress and with an enormous matching beribboned and feathered hat perched on top of her elaborately curled and ringleted auburn hair. She paused for a moment and looked at the two girls, inclining her head slightly and rather frigidly to them both before sailing briskly into the house, shouting orders in French as she went.

‘Who is that?’ Clementine whispered, her eyes wide with wonderment. ‘What an amazing hat she is wearing. It is almost as big as she is.’ She regretfully touched her own plain straw effort. ‘Bigger, in fact. Did you see how tiny she is?’

‘That lady is Madame la Duchesse de Polignac,’ Venetia whispered back. ‘Is she as famous here as she seems to be everywhere else? No? She is the best friend of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. They are said to be inseparable. In fact, that’s not all they say…’

Madame la Duchesse was followed out of her carriage by a tall, dark haired young man in a green coat who impatiently waved away the footman who came forward to assist him. He paused for a moment on his way into the house and bowed to them both, his grey eyes making no secret of his admiration for Venetia who smiled and responded with a curtsey.

‘Do you know him?’ Clementine asked as they watched the man go into the house with a final warm look over his shoulder at her new friend.

‘That is the Comte Jules de Choiseul-Amboise,’ Venetia replied with a tiny shrug as they carried on down the street, where a dozen footmen were busily helping the Duchesse’s fabulously dressed entourage of chattering French ladies and gentlemen down from the carriages and carrying in what appeared to be hundreds of boxes and trunks. ‘I met him once in London. He is quite handsome isn’t he?’

‘I think he is very handsome,’ Clementine replied rather breathlessly, feeling a little envious of the other girl. When would a young man look at her in such a way?’

Madame la Princesse de Guéménée

13 Jan

When most people think of the ladies of Marie Antoinette’s court, they think of a pampered, indolent, frivolous, probably rather stupid women covered in patches, with towering white hair, sumptuously gorgeous dresses and a spoiled pug dog under their arm. A bit like Paris Hilton at Halloween, except every day.

Of course, for the main part, the reality was very different but it has to be said that the Princesse de Guéménée, governess to the royal children was every bit the epitome of the aristocratic grande dame and every bit as flamboyant, exquisite and extravagant as our fevered imaginings could possibly conceive of.

Madame la Princesse was born Victoire Armande Josèphe de Rohan at the gorgeous Hôtel de Soubise at 60 Rue des Francs Bourgeois in the Marais district of Paris on the 28th of December 1743. Her father was Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise and her mother, his second wife, Anne Thérèse de Savoie (daughter of Victor Amadeus, Prince de Carignan). Thanks to her father, she was a member of the powerful, disgustingly wealthy and influential Rohan clan, while her mother, who was a cousin of Louis XV, the Princesse de Lamballe, the Comtesse de Provence and the Comtesse d’Artois. bestowed upon her a link to the ruling house of Sicily.
Sadly, the Princesse de Soubise was to die in childbirth at the Hôtel de Soubise on the 5th of April 1745 at the age of twenty seven, leaving Victoire motherless at the age of less than two. Her father soon married again, this time to a seventeen year old German princess, the Landgravine Anna Victoria of Hesse-Rotenburg. The marriage was to be childless and also exceedingly unhappy as both spouses cheated on each other. Finally, in 1757, Victoria ran away from Paris with her lover, Monsieur de Laval-Montmorency, which would have been scandalous enough had she not funded this elopement with 900,000 livres worth of jewels that she had stolen from her husband.
The errant pair were arrested at Tournai by order of Louis XV and Victoria was sent packing back to her parents in Germany. We can only wonder what effect all of this had on her young step daughters, Victoire and her elder sister from her father’s first marriage to Anne Marie Louise de la Tour d’Auvergne (a granddaughter of Louis XIV’s first great love, Marie Mancini), Charlotte Élisabeth.

 


Of course, Charlotte was already married by the time her father’s third marriage had begun to flounder. Thanks to her mother, she was a great heiress with titles in her own right and at the age of sixteen, on the 3rd of May 1753, she was married to Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, a great grandson of Louis XIV and Athénaïs de Montespan. Their wedding was held in the chapel at Versailles before all of the court and the young bride brought an enormous dowry of 20 million livres to her husband. Sadly, Charlotte was to die on the 4th of March 1760, aged just twenty two.

The younger girl, Victoire was to be married at seventeen, on the 15th January 1761 to a second cousin, another Rohan, Henri Louis, Duc de Montbazon and Prince de Guéménée, who was two years younger than his bride. The good looking, fabulously wealthy young couple subsequently took up residence in the Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée at 6 Place des Vosges.

The new Princesse was lively, clever, extravagant and rather too fond of gambling, which of course that she got on famously at Louis XV’s court when she was presented at Versailles after her wedding. With the Rohan millions at her disposal, she dressed in fabulously gorgeous clothes, gave in to every whim no matter how expensive and lost thousands at the card table. She became famous for her amazing balls and also, less amazingly, her gambling parties where genuine croupiers from the casinos of Paris would deal the cards.
Madame la Princesse was not above courting scandal either as she offended Louis XV by getting up and walking away when his mistress Madame du Barry sat next to her at Marly. The King, who saw an insult to Madame du Barry as an insult to himself, was incensed and sent the Princesse away from court for a while to teach her a lesson.
She did not neglect her matrimonial duties in the midst of all this hedonistic pleasure seeking and presented her husband with five children: Charlotte Victoire (17th November 1761), Charles Alain (18th January 1764), Marie Louise (13th April 1765), Louis Victor (20th July 1766) and Jules Armand (20th October 1768).


In 1775, after the coronation of Louis XVI both of the couple were promoted to official appointments at court with Henri Louis becoming Grand Chamberlain of France, while Victoire was appointed to the post of Governess to the Royal Children after her aunt, the Comtesse de Marsan, decided to retire after her favourite pupil, Princess Clotilde had got married. At this point, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had not yet had any children, so Victoire’s sole charge was the young Princess Élisabeth.
Lillian C. Smythe wrote: ‘The Royal Governess was the Princesse de Guemenee, who received this appointment by virtue of her relationship to Madame de Marsan, the function of instruction being considered vested in the family of de Rohan. There was no doubt that the Princesse de Guemenee was capable of instructing upon many matters. She was a great lover of little dogs, and invariably appeared surrounded by a multitude of them. “She offered to them a species of worship, and pretended, through their medium, to hold communication with the world of spirits.” She had been convicted of cheating at cards on several occasions. She was distinguished for the urbanity of her manner towards the ladies honoured by her husband’s preference, paying the most delicate attentions to each in turn ; thus she compelled admiration for her exemplary fulfilment of a wife’s highest duty. She entertained magnificently, royally, outshone the whole Court by her dress, and paved the way for the greatest bankruptcy known in France— the failure that affected all classes of society and plunged France into ruin; for all, from dukes to poor Breton sailors, had invested their moneys in the house of de Guemenee. “Only a King or a Rohan could have made such a failure,” was the consoling sentiment of the Princesse, as she contemplated her bootmaker’s bill of 60,000 livres [£2,400], or the amount of 16,000 livres [£640] owed to her paper- hanger. And the ruin of the Rohans hastened the Revolution.’


The princess was rather dismayed by the change in governesses. Madame de Marsan had been strict and rather unpleasant and Élisabeth had heartily disliked her but Victoire, Duchesse de Montbazon was a whole different kettle of fish. This may not have been the best choice, considering Élisabeth’s peaceful, virtuous nature and way of shrinking from any court intrigue that may come near her as the Princesse was a typical Rohan drama queen, prone to having messy love affairs, squandering a fortune on fripperies, leaving a trail of debts and was also rather too fond of gambling. The shy princess who had a very strong sense of morality would have been well aware of her new governess’ wayward reputation and extravagant behaviour and must have braced herself for the worst.
In the end they seem to have got along fairly well. Victoire seems to have had an affectionate, fun loving nature which young people really responded to. For her part, Madame la Princesse thought that her aunt, Madame de Marsan had been too strict with her charges and that Madame Élisabeth was too unassuming, pious and serious minded. What she needed, the rakish Princesse decided, was to have more fun and so she encouraged the girl to attend her parties and balls in an attempt to make her more sophisticated and frivolous. It didn’t really work as Élisabeth was also exceedingly stubborn.


One happy thing about the new arrangement was that Victoire often took Élisabeth to her new house at Montreuil, close to Versailles. The princess, who preferred a simpler style of life to the ostentation of Versailles was enchanted with the chåteau and fell madly in love with it.
Margaret Trouncer described it: ‘The house, built in 1776, was a white, semi-circular, two-storied building, with the stables on one side and the kitchen offices on the other, quite far away from the dining room. On the ground floor, a circular chapel occupied the centre. The principal rooms were the boudoir, with wainscoting and a cupboard decorated with arabesques, the library with bookcases paned in clear glass, the buffet warming room paved in white marble, the dining room, the billiard room, the music room, the drawing room and some ante-chambers. Some of the old floors in small parquet squares were still there. Upstairs, twenty one panelled rooms. On the other side, French windows looked on to a park. One could walk straight out of the drawing room into the garden. On the right hand side was the alley of lime trees on the top of the terrace, whose wall separated the estate from the Avenue de Paris. On the left, hidden by trees and quite a distance away, an orangery, a dairy, cow sheds, farm buildings and the gardener’s cottage. There were also kitchen gardens and hot houses.’

There were more changes in 1778, when Victoire took charge of the new baby princess, Madame Royale, the first child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, while the detestable and rapacious Comtesse Diane de Polignac took charge of Élisabeth. To be in charge of Madame Royale and her subsequent siblings was a great honour and we are told that after the Queen had given birth, Victoire, proudly beaming as though she herself had given birth to the royal infant would be carried in a chair from Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber to the royal nurseries on the ground floor of Versailles, the baby on her lap while all of Versailles paid homage.

In private though, things were not quite so rosy. Victoire had fallen in love with one of Marie Antoinette’s best male friends, Auguste Gabriel de Franquetot, Comte de Coigny, who had been widowed in 1775 and left with a six year old daughter, Aimée who Victoire was raising alongside her own children and who would later become the Duchesse de Fleury and brief muse of André Chénier. Victoire and Augustin became lovers and were apparently devoted to each other. Meanwhile, her husband had fallen in love with one of Marie Antoinette’s circle, the lovely Thérèse Lucy de Dillon, Comtesse de Dillon, who was mother to the future Madame de la Tour du Pin.
Sadly Thérèse Lucy was to die in 1782 at the age of thirty leaving all who knew her devastated and shortly afterwards the Prince de Guéménée declared himself bankrupt, with debts of over 33 million livres. It was to be an enormous scandal. The extravagance of the royal family and those close to them was already under some scrutiny and was beginning to be more loudly criticised so to have two key members of their household be in so much debt was considered shocking and also a justification of the criticisms of frivolity and wastefulness that were leveled at the court of Versailles.

Let’s not forget that it wasn’t just the Guéménée couple who were ruined but also countless tradesmen and others who were left with unpaid bills and vast sums of money owed to them that they might now never see. The ripples caused by the Prince’s bankruptcy were to be widespread and devastating.
Marie Antoinette, who had spent many many ruinous hours gambling at the Princesse’s notorious card parties where it was said that the young people didn’t emerge for days on end, did her best to help the couple. She and the Princesse had never been best friends – Victoire was older than Marie Antoinette and rather too sophisticated for her tastes – but they got along well enough for her to want to help in some way, which she did by securing a loan for the Prince and also arranging for Louis XVI to buy their estate at Montreuil for Princesse Élisabeth.


The couple were to remain at the fringes of court life for the rest of the 1780s until the Revolution began in 1789 and they fled with their children to Austria after the fall of the Bastille. The Guéménée family eventually settled at Sychrov Castle in Bohemia, where their family remained although Victoire was to die in Paris on the 20th September 1807 at the age of sixty three.

The Duchesse de Polignac, 9th Dec 1793

9 Dec

Yolande Marie Gabrielle de Polastron, Duchesse de Polignac is the epitome of the French aristocrat at Versailles before the Revolution. She was the adored favourite of Marie Antoinette and, in contrast to the undoubtedly virtuous Princesse de Lamballe, was known to have had at least one lover so she was hardly on a par with a Merteuil for example, but still hardly a vision of virtue either.


Although not a regular beauty, the Duchesse de Polignac had a freshness and prettiness about her that was immensely attractive and captivated all who encountered her. It was she who encouraged Marie Antoinette to spend time at the Petit Trianon and engage in charmingly bucolic activities in the farm there.

I have written before about seeing this portrait at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire and how profoundly it affected me to have it there before me. I stood in front of it for a long time, committing it to memory.



The charming Duchesse hated life at Versailles just as much as Marie Antoinette did but at the same time was not adverse to accepting favours and money for herself and her large and rather rapacious family. More charitable biographers have commented that she was simply too soft hearted to ever be unable to turn down a request for help but a more cynical age might well be forgiven for thinking that perhaps La Belle Polignac was not quite so artless and full of dislike for pomp as she tried to appear.

Marie Antoinette began to tire of Madame de Polignac in the last years at Versailles and there are mentions of quarrels and awkwardness between the two women. She may well have sunk from view altogether if the Revolution had not broken out in 1789, causing the ever unpopular Polignac family to instantly flee France and seek refuge elsewhere.

The unfortunate Madame de Polignac was never to return to France and died shortly after Marie Antoinette on the 9th December 1793 at the age of 44 of an unknown terminal disease. There is something fitting about the fact that she died in Vienna, where Marie Antoinette was born and which she had left in 1770 never to see again.

Versailles, 5th October 1789

5 Oct

I had plenty of time to be alone with my thoughts that afternoon at the Petit Trianon. The Queen had gone off on her own to her little grotto, keen to enjoy the rare luxury of solitude and leaving her ladies in waiting to wander about the gardens and gossip in the lovely light filled salon. It was a beautiful day, sunny and bright with a few occasional rain showers that sent the other ladies shrieking and giggling indoors. I had never cared about the rain though and settled myself on the stone steps that led down from the château to the gardens, pulling my soft cashmere shawl close around my shoulders and keeping my purple silk parasol close to hand, just in case.

I breathed a sigh of contentment as I looked around the gardens, enjoying the fresh air, the distant sound of birdsong and the piano music that floated down from one of the open windows behind me. It was a perfect day, a perfect moment. I wandered across the grass to the Belvedere, a small white pavilion beside the lake, which was decorated inside with pretty, fanciful arabesque designs on the walls and a painted sky with clouds on the ceiling.

It was a glorious day, the sun dappled over the marble floor and the only sounds to be heard were bees humming around the last of the fragrant summer roses, birds singing in the trees and the muted sighs of the Queen as she sat in the nearby grotto daydreaming of the handsome Swedish nobleman Axel de Fersen.

I sank down upon the green silk covered sofa that stood in the centre of the pavilion and idly pulled a discarded fashion magazine towards me, the corners of the pages dog eared and torn where they had been turned over. I allowed the magazine to slip from my hand and leaned my head back against the sofa, closing my eyes as I breathed in the fresh autumn air and the voluptuous scent of the flowers that were everywhere at Trianon. It all seemed a million miles away from the troubles in Paris and the stresses of the past few months and suddenly I understood why the Queen was so passionately attached to her little château and loved to spend so much time here, especially since the sad loss of her eldest son, the Dauphin earlier that year.

The honeyed tranquillity of this scene was broken by a shout from the direction of the Trianon and I sprang to my feet, my cashmere shawl falling, forgotten to the floor as one of the Queen’s young pages came running towards the Belvedere. As he ran his hat fell off and he left it behind him, lying forlorn, a black splodge in the middle of the lawn. I saw that he was looking absolutely terrified, his dark eyes wide with fear and with a cry of alarm I lifted up my white silk skirts and ran to meet him.

‘What is it?’ I cried, taking him by the arms as in his panic he fell towards me. ‘What has happened?’

‘Madame la Marquise, we must alert the Queen immediately!’ The boy was sobbing now and clinging to my hands.

‘The women of Paris are marching on Versailles. They will be here in only a few hours. Madame, they mean to kill the Queen and take the rest of the royal family back to Paris!’

I stared at him in uncomprehending horror. ‘Mon dieu, it must be a mistake,’ I breathed, knowing all the while that he spoke the truth and there was no mistake. It was not entirely unexpected after all – it was only due to our own complacent stupidity that everyone had forgotten the very real threat that the people of Paris posed to Versailles. I remembered what Lucien had said to me all those hours ago in the Hall of Mirrors and felt sick. Not everyone had been stupid.

‘There is no mistake, Madame,’ the boy replied, wiping away his tears with the back of his sleeve. All etiquette was forgotten at that moment. ‘Monsieur le Comte de Saint-Priest himself sent me.’

The Comte de Saint-Priest was one of the King’s ministers and much respected at court. ‘I have been instructed to bring the Queen back to Versailles as quickly as possible.’ He scampered alongside me as I turned and ran back, my heart beating painfully in my breast.

We reached the grotto and I turned and put my finger to my lips. ‘You should wait here while I go and get her.’ He looked annoyed at being robbed of his moment of drama but, amidst much grumbling, complied and leaned against a tree while I pushed my way through the overhanging branches to the grotto that lay hidden within. In the distance I could hear the shouts and screams of the other ladies as the news spread and they ran across the lawn towards us.

‘Your Majesty?’ It was gloomy inside and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.

‘Who is that?’ The Queen’s voice rang out imperiously and faintly churlish. ‘I thought that I gave orders not to be disturbed under any circumstances?’ She stepped forward from the darkness, her pale muslin gown shimmering in the green and eerie sunlight that floated through the trees overhead. ‘Well? What is it?’

‘It is Cassandre, the Marquise de Vautière.’ I said took a deep breath. ‘I am sorry, Madame, but you have to return to the palace immediately.’ She had seen me now and I dropped a hasty curtsey. ‘Madame, the people are marching here from Paris.’

‘The people are marching here from Paris?’ she repeated, raising a hand to clutch the fine cashmere shawl that she had wrapped around her shoulders. ‘What do you mean?’ She looked shocked, and peered at me as though she didn’t quite understand what I was saying.

I felt suddenly impatient. ‘Madame, they are coming to Versailles and intend to take you all back with them to the capital.’ I stepped back and held the branches up so that she could walk through. ‘You are in the gravest danger here and must return to the palace where you can be properly guarded.’

A carriage was waiting for us in the courtyard and I stepped aside as one of the footmen helped the Queen inside before clambering in myself, closing the door with a slam behind me.

‘I have forgotten something…’ Marie Antoinette murmured, putting her hand on the gilt door handle.

‘Madame, there is no more time,’ I said. ‘One of the pages can come back for it.’ The carriage sprang away and I leaned back against the soft, upholstered seats, gazing out of the window as we drove out of the gates for what might well be the very last time. I dared to steal just one look at my mistress’ distraught face as we rolled away from the beautiful château that she had adored so much and that had brought her so much happiness and then quickly glanced elsewhere, not wishing to intrude upon her pain and not knowing what to say until she sniffed, wiped away her tears and settled back against the seat, gazing out with disinterest at the tall poplar trees as they rushed past. ‘Why do I have the feeling that I will never see my poor Trianon again?’ she asked in a plaintive tone.

I forced a smile. ‘I am sure that you will be able to return tomorrow, Madame,’ I replied with a confidence that I did not entirely feel. ‘It is bound to be a false alarm.’ I leaned my head against the seat and gazed out at the gardens which were now becoming enveloped in a grey autumnal mist that hung about the tops of the tall trees, my thoughts not with the spoilt woman sitting opposite but with my sister and Adélaïde, both of whom were still in Paris. What was happening there?


It did not take long to reach the main château and the large groups of troops milling about in the Cour d’Armes and Cour Royale made it clear that the ominous news had already spread throughout Versailles. As the Queen’s coach pulled up in the courtyard several liveried royal guards ran forward to surround it as Marie Antoinette and I were helped down and then hustled into the building, through the marble vestibule and up the ornate Queen’s Staircase to her apartment, just as a heavy downpour of rain suddenly began that lashed mercilessly against the windows and sent the troops running for cover.

‘Cassandre?’ I turned my head to see my brother, standing in one of the tall windows of the Queen’s salon. He may have been dressed with his usual exquisite care in a suit of shimmering midnight blue silk with barely a lace or button out of place but I immediately noticed that his handsome face was careworn and anxious. ‘Thank God that you are safe,’ he said quietly, closing his arms around me as I rushed into his embrace. ‘I have been waiting here since I first heard the news.’

‘What is happening, Lucien?’ We moved into the shelter of the window. The rain was still coming down heavily and I wondered about the army of women and how they were coping in the deluge. ‘They must be soaked to the skin,’ I murmured, gazing across the terrace, which was covered with troops, all standing about nervously and giving the appearance of not knowing quite what to do with themselves. In the distance I could see a small group of soldiers trying their best to close the enormous palace gates, which had become rusted to the ground through decades of standing open.

I shivered then, feeling suddenly defenceless and afraid.

We stood for a while in silence, watching the stream of anxious courtiers as they made their way through the Queen’s rooms, pausing every few minutes to plaintively ask every chance acquaintance if there was more news. ‘The King is in a council meeting,’ Lucien remarked at last. ‘His ministers are advising him to withdraw to Rambouillet with his family but he is steadfastly refusing to abandon Versailles.’ He sighed. ‘Our only hope is the Queen. It may be that she will be able to persuade him to leave.’

I stared at him. ‘You really believe that it would be best to run away?’

‘Not run away, no, but I do not think that there is anything to be gained from remaining here at Versailles.’ My brother shrugged and helped himself to some snuff, its sharp cinnamon tang floating through the air.

‘We are at the mercy of the canaille. I am told that there are several hundred women from the poorest faubourgs of Paris marching on the château,’ he said, looking out of the window.’If they manage to get past the guards then we will all be slaughtered.’

I gave a nervous laugh. ‘Surely they are not savages?’ I said. ‘I refuse to believe that they have come all this way just to murder us.’

Lucien raised an eyebrow. ‘My dear, they are telling all and sundry that they are coming for the Queen’s head and I, for one, believe them.’

I gasped and leaned back against the wall, feeling suddenly faint. ‘I do not believe it,’ I whispered. ‘I know that she is hated but I cannot believe that they actually wish to do her harm!’


I left him and went into the Queen’s beautiful, luxurious bedchamber, which was usually so serene and relaxing but which was now filled with terrified courtiers darting here and there, their eyes wild with fear as they chewed over the few scraps of information available as the usually sweetly perfumed air became sharp with the scent of sweat and pure, unadulterated terror. They hovered and buzzed  around my mistress, who was seated in a comfortable blue silk upholstered armchair by the huge fireplace and looking very different to how she had looked only an hour earlier.

Gone was the frightened, tearful, lost looking woman of the Trianon and in her place there sat the composed and dignified daughter of an Empress. There was no longer a single of trace of fear in her face and bearing and, like everyone else, I no longer had any doubt that I was in the presence of a Queen. Never before had she looked so regal. Could it be that adversity would be the making of Marie Antoinette?

‘I know that they have come from Paris to demand my head, but I learned from my mother not to fear death.’ Marie Antoinette looked slowly around the assembled courtiers, who fell into a hush at her words. ‘I shall await it with firmness, at the side of my husband.’

There was a flurry of activity as Madame la Princesse de Lamballe and several other ladies fell sobbing loudly to their knees in front of her, kissing her bejewelled hand and professing eternal devotion.

I rolled my eyes and quickly made my way to the side of Aimée de Coigny, who was standing beside the door, looking impossibly beautiful as always and stifling a yawn behind her exquisitely painted fan as she watched the touching spectacle that surrounded the Queen. ‘Any news?’ she asked, with a weary sigh. ‘No one here seems to know what is happening. Perhaps it is all just a false alarm after all.’

I shook my head. ‘I do not think so. I have just spoken to my brother and he told me that the King is being asked to withdraw to his château at Rambouillet but refuses to leave.’

‘Ah,’ Aimée said, barely troubling to lower her voice. ‘And once again the King procrastinates while all around him France falls to pieces.’ She sighed with irritation. ‘I can imagine exactly how it is.’


In silent accord, we linked arms and walked out through the gilded salon next door to the Hall of Mirrors, where most of the court had assembled along with their children and a few of the servants. We were immediately assailed by a crowd of people desperate for any scraps of news but were unable to add much to what was already well known. As we pushed our way through, I heard a whisper that the mob of women had now reached Versailles and had invaded the meetings of the National Assembly, where they were drunkenly causing havoc and loudly demanding to be taken to the King so that they could ask him for bread.

Aimée sighed. ‘I hope that that will be an end to it.’ She smiled at me and shrugged. ‘It is not very likely though is it? Once they have caught the merest whiff of fear, they won’t stop until they see blood.’

After several hours of waiting, the news spread that the King had finally listened to his ministers and the Queen and agreed to leave for the comparative safety of his château at Rambouillet. His carriage had been ordered but it was discovered that the mob had cut the traces and stolen the horses away, making escape impossible. We were all trapped. Now suddenly, people whose only thought in life had been to reside amidst the splendour at Versailles and never leave were desperate to get away and I, to my shame, was amongst them.


Aimée and I could not bear to be still and interspersed our pacing along the crowded gallery with visits to the large, ornately decorated salon de l’Oeuil de Boeuf (so named for the large ‘bull’s eye’ round window set high into the wall) next to the King’s bedroom, where along with a crowd of other courtiers we waited for ministers to leave the royal presence. Everyone was hungry for news but it was frustratingly slow in coming.

We were there when a small group of women picked out from the mob was escorted into the King’s presence to make their demands in person and like everyone else we covered our noses at the smell, stared in horror at how filthy they were and gaped at the horrible rags that they wore, which barely covered their bodies and could have offered very little protection against the elements. It seemed inconceivable that fellow French women could be so destitute in appearance and again I felt a stirring of sympathy for the forces that had brought them here to Versailles.

After this, we made our way through the huge, echoing state rooms to the salon d’Hercules, which had huge arched windows overlooking the rain swept courtyard, beyond which we could see the vast mob of women, baying incoherently and thrusting their hands through the locked gates. It was a terrifying sight and I shivered as I looked down into their twisted, famished faces, their mouths pulled wide open as they screamed and shouted up at the château windows.

Night fell over Versailles and as the footmen and pages walked silently from room to room lighting the tall lily scented wax candles with long tapers, the courtiers kept their vigil, desperate for news and too afraid to return to their rooms. Aimée and I sat on stools in the dimly lit salon de l’Oeuil de Boeuf and ate stale bread rolls brought to us by one of the young château pages, who flitted freely from room to room dispensing food and valuable snippets of gossip.

‘What do you think is going to happen?’ I asked Aimée.

She sighed and looked around at the exhausted, drawn faces of the other courtiers. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last, swallowing the last morsel of bread. ‘I have never felt so uncertain and it frightens me.’

At that moment the doors swung open and the Marquis de La Fayette strode in alone. He was soaked through to the skin, covered with mud and looked half dead with exhaustion. There was an excited stir of noise and activity at his arrival but he impatiently waved away anyone who approached him and instead went straight to the door of the King’s chamber.

I clutched Aimée’s arm and hardly dared breathe. Had La Fayette come to save us all? The door swung silently open and he vanished inside before it closed with a slam behind him. A collective sigh ran through the room which then erupted into a chorus of conjecture and discussion.

‘I would give anything to know what is being said,’ Aimée remarked. ‘The Queen detests Monsieur le Marquis de La Fayette and will never willingly accept his assistance.’

I sighed and nodded in agreement ‘The Queen places rather too much importance upon who she likes and dislikes,’ I whispered with a disdainful shrug. ‘She should have learnt to be less childish about such matters by now. I am sure that her petty dislikes have already done her great harm.’

Aimée nodded. ‘Just look at what happened with Rohan.’ She winked. ‘If the Queen had not taken one of her dislikes to him then that whole absurd rigmarole with the necklace need never have happened and perhaps, who knows, we wouldn’t be here now.’

The King’s door opened again and Lucien appeared looking pale and exhausted. He ignored everyone else as they crowded around him, clamouring for attention and came straight to me, kissing my hand and leading me into one of the windows, where we could converse with some semblance of privacy. In the distance, I could see the tiny amber lights of the mob’s campfires that blazed on the other side of the gates, while their drunken shouts and rowdy songs floated through the darkness. ‘My darling girl, it looks like the crisis has passed,’ he said in an undertone. ‘La Fayette has brought several thousand troops with him from Paris and has given his personal assurance that the château and its inhabitants will be safe from all harm.’

I gave a little cry then almost sobbed with relief. ‘Thank God,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, thank God.’

Lucien gently touched my cheek. ‘You look exhausted, petite.’ He waved away a group of courtiers who were hovering nearby in the hope of catching some of our conversation. ‘A message has been sent to the Queen. It will hurt her pride to accept help from Monsieur le Marquis de La Fayette but that cannot be helped. Not now. It is too late for such delicacies, I am afraid.’ He took my hand again. ‘Try your best to persuade her to be gracious.’

I laughed, a brittle, alien sound that echoed uneasily in my ears and made the others stare at us. ‘She won’t pay any attention to me.’

Lucien smiled. ‘I know that she can be difficult but try your best.’

I gave Aimée a goodbye hug and walked through the splendid rooms to the Queen’s bedchamber where Marie Antoinette, quiet and clearly under a huge amount of strain was in the middle of being prepared for bed. Her eyes gazed into the distance as her waiting women let down her blonde hair and carefully removed her pearl earrings and diamond bracelets. I stepped forward and with the other ladies in waiting silently went through the slow, comforting motions of the centuries old ritual but we were all aware that there was something different in the sweetly scented air, something that chilled us to the very bone. We looked at each other nervously behind Marie Antoinette’s back and could hardly bring ourselves to meet her usually candid blue gaze. No one spoke and the sense of something coming to an end surrounded us all.

‘That will be all,’ the Queen dismissed us with a fleeting smile and a wave of her hand. ‘I thank you.’ She went to the great canopied bed and without removing her yellow and white silk dressing gown lay down upon the beautiful counterpane with its design of flowers and peacock feathers. ‘I should like to be alone now.’

I went out into the large apple green salon next door to the Queen’s bedroom and sank down with a grateful sigh on a comfortable chair next to the fireplace. I felt utterly drained and was in no great hurry to return through the dark and echoing château staircases and corridors to my own small apartment so I stared for a while into the dying fire and wearily considered that day’s events. It still seemed utterly surreal and inconceivable that we were under siege in such a way.

La Fayette had promised to protect us all but was that really possible? I thought of poor Monsieur de Launey, who had been so horribly decapitated by the mob when the Bastille fell on Lucrèce’s wedding day. They were clearly a law unto themselves. Bloodthirsty and untamed. Was La Fayette man enough to hold them back? I doubted it.

The rain continued to pelt against the windows and this gentle sound along with the glow of the fire finally silenced my racing, confused thoughts and lulled me into sleep. I vaguely heard the Queen’s waiting women tiptoe past at one point to take up their usual stations beside Her Majesty’s door but could not rouse myself enough to speak to them although I heard their chattering as I floated in and out of sleep.


I was rudely awakened several hours later by a loud echoing banging noise and the sound of shouting and screams. For a second I wondered where on earth I was but then realised that I must have accidentally fallen asleep before the fire. The banging and enormous roar of voices came nearer and I sat up in alarm as it became clear that the noise was coming from within the château itself and was getting louder with each passing second.

‘What is it?’ I was still stupefied by sleep and shook my head from side to side in confusion, trying desperately to clear my thoughts. ‘What is happening out there?’

At that instant there was the distinct sound of a shot followed by a terrible scream and the Queen’s two waiting women, Mesdames Auguié and Thibault, sprang into action and ran down the length of the long room to the door at the other end while I sprang up in panic from the chair and followed them, my heart beating loudly in my ears as the shouting came closer and closer. I wondered what the time was but had no idea although the pale blue light that glimmered through the tall windows indicated that it was near dawn.

‘Mon dieu, what is happening?’ Madame Auguié cautiously opened the door to the antechamber. We all held our breath, fearing to be confronted by a terrible mob baying for our blood but the room was empty but for one solitary guardsman who was struggling to barricade the door with only his musket to assist him. His feet were sliding back along the floor as he pushed against the painted and gilded wood with all of his strength.

‘Sauvez la reine!’ he yelled over his shoulder, and I gave a scream of fright when I saw that his face was covered with blood, which dripped onto his once white muslin cravat. ‘They are coming to kill her!’

The mob had somehow gained entrance to the château, made their way up the Queen’s staircase and were now only feet away on the other side of the flimsy door. ‘Go now!’ The guardsman was trying his best to keep the door shut against the oncoming tide but it was a losing battle and we all knew that it was only a matter of time before they got in.

I turned and sped back across the salon to the Queen’s door. ‘Madame! Wake up!’ I hammered on the door, fumbled with the latch, found it and then almost fell into the room. ‘The mob are in the château! They are coming for you!’ Marie Antoinette stared at me and sleepily sat up on the bed, which she had not even troubled to get into. ‘Venez, Madame! We must make haste!’

‘Is this true?’ The Queen pressed one thin hand to her throat and swallowed nervously as she listened to the noise of the angry mob come nearer and nearer. ‘I heard a sound on the terrace beneath my windows. It woke me up.’ She sounded plaintive and faintly aggrieved.

‘Madame, there is no time to be lost!’ I said impatiently, picking up the Queen’s silk and lace dressing gown, which had been cast on to a nearby chair and handing it to her. ‘You must leave immediately!’

The two waiting women ran in and frantically locked the door behind them. ‘Madame! For the love of God get out of bed!’ Madame Thibault shouted, in such a panic that all etiquette was forgotten. ‘They are coming to kill us all!’

Marie Antoinette gasped then and scrambled from the bed. ‘I must go to the King!’ She threw her dressing gown on over her negligée, absent-mindedly picked up some silk stockings, thought better of actually putting them on and ran to the concealed door that led to the secret passage to her petits cabinets and also the King’s rooms. ‘Quickly! Follow me!’

We lifted our cumbersome skirts almost to our knees and ran down the tiny little whitewashed corridor to the door at the end. Marie Antoinette clumsily tried to open it but the handle would not turn. ‘Ciel, it is locked!’ She tried again while the rest of us stared at each other in horror, unable to credit what was happening.

‘Mon dieu, we are trapped!’ The Queen’s voice rose in panic and frantically she began to scream and hammer against the door. ‘Let me out! They are coming to kill me! Please, I beg of you, open the door!’

My heart was in my mouth as I also pounded on the door with all my strength and until my hands smarted with pain. I then tried to force it with my shoulder but it refused to budge. The sound of the mob came closer and closer until they were a loud roar only feet away. They had reached the Queen’s bedchamber and it was only a matter of time before they discovered the little corridor.

‘Hurry! They are almost upon us!’ Tears of fear and frustration ran down my cheeks and I angrily wiped them away with the back of my hand. ‘Please, open the door!’ The crowd were now so close that we could hear the terrible threats that they were shouting against the Queen.

There was the sound of scuffling and miraculously the door opened and we fell into the salon de l’Oeuil de Boeuf to be confronted by a frightened looking footman, his cravat untied and hanging loose around his neck and his wig askew. He had clearly been asleep until our screams awakened him and now had no idea what to do.

Hurriedly, our fingers shaking with fear we locked the door and then ran across the room, now empty and lit only by a few candles and the grey rays of approaching dawn, to the King’s bedchamber. To our consternation it was empty but a sleepy valet was on hand to inform us that the King had been informed of the invasion of the château and had gone in search of his wife. We then had no option but to sit and wait until he returned, Marie Antoinette staring straight ahead and still holding her crumpled stockings in her hands and myself comforting the distraught Madame Thibault who was sobbing and shaking with shock, while in the distance we heard the terrible roaring and screaming of the mob as they destroyed the rooms that we had just left.


The King returned soon afterwards pale and trembling with relief at the sight of his wife. He had in his arms the little Dauphin, who clearly had no idea what was happening and stared at both of his parents in sleepy confusion. ‘Maman, you don’t have any shoes on,’ he observed with a laugh, pointing at the Queen’s bare feet.

‘My darling,’ the King tenderly put the little boy down on a sofa and took his wife in his arms and gently embraced her. Whatever other faults Louis XVI might have as a King and a man, there was no doubting the enormous love that he had for his wife and family. For the first time, I felt almost envious of my mistress. Perhaps she was the lucky one after all?

‘Thank God, thank God,’ Marie Antoinette whispered into his chest, as he clumsily reached up to stroke her unbound and dishevelled fair hair which fell about her shoulders. ‘I thought that I was going to be killed. I thought they were going to hurt me.’

Dawn arose and as the first pink rays of the new day bathed the King’s magnificent crimson and gold bedchamber in sunlight I yawned and pulled my cashmere shawl closer about my shoulders before cautiously reaching up to pat my now collapsed and ruined hair.

‘Maman, I am hungry!’ The little Dauphin piped up in an imperious tone as we all looked at each other in shell-shocked horror, unable to comprehend the events that had taken place that night. He had been extremely patient so far but the hours were dragging and our little traumatised group had been left without sustenance for too long. ‘When will I have my breakfast?’ His lower lip, so clearly inherited from his Hapsburg ancestors pouted dangerously and he looked close to mutiny. He had been happily occupied playing with his sister’s long fair hair but now his gentle plaiting was becoming painful tugs and she was beginning to wince with pain and gently protest.

Marie Antoinette turned back from the window and directed an abstracted gaze upon her son.
‘Soon, chou d’amour.’ She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘When all the people have gone away, then I promise that we shall have breakfast together.’ She touched his blond head for a brief moment then turned away and continued to gaze out of the window at the immense, noisy crowd that had gathered in the courtyard below, which had become a seething mess of humanity in the hours since the intruders had been cast out of the actual building by Lafayette’s brave troops.

‘This is insupportable!’ The King’s obese younger brother, the Comte de Provence paced the length of the room, punching his fist into his other hand. He had dressed in haste and his purple silk coat was stained with grease and wine. ‘This is unbelievable! If I were King…’ He stopped himself while his normally placid sister Élisabeth, ever the mediator in the troubled royal family, reached out and placed a restraining hand on his arm.

Marie Antoinette turned from the window. ‘Yes?’ She raised one eyebrow. ‘If you were King then what?’ She pulled her dressing gown closer and held herself with immense dignity. Her brother in law flushed and could not meet her eye.

The door opened and in walked the King and La Fayette, who looked flushed and mortified, his ears pink beneath his immaculate white powdered wig, because he had fallen asleep and missed all the action and had therefore arrived at the château too late to prevent the invasion. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry…’ he said now to us all.

The King spoke across him. ‘Monsieur le Marquis believes that it might be for the best if I show myself to the people.’ He went without pausing, as if he feared that he might lose his nerve to the windows which led to a small iron balcony, overlooking the courtyard. ‘I must do my duty.’ He kissed his wife’s forehead as he went past her and it was in vain that she caught at his arm and whispered his name.

I held my breath as the King pushed open the window and stepped out alone into the blindingly bright sunshine, half expecting him to be shot dead on the spot. Instead he was greeted with cheers and even a few sparse shouts of ‘Vive le Roi!’, a sound which had not been heard for a long time and which brought a buzz of relief and renewed hope to the room. He bowed and self consciously waved to the mob then returned and immediately his wife and sister threw themselves into his arms with relief.

‘La Reine! La Reine!’ The crowd suddenly roared in their thousands, to the horror of everyone assembled in the room. ‘We want to see the Queen! Send her out on to the balcony where we can see her!’

The Marquis de La Fayette turned to Marie Antoinette, looking just as frightened and uncertain as everyone else. ‘Madame, do you feel able to show yourself?’

The Queen looked at him coldly. ‘But of course.’ She straightened her shoulders proudly, took her children by the hand and looking for all the world as though she was about to take a stroll on the terrace, the most hated woman in all France stepped lightly out on to the balcony.


Everyone in the room held their breath and overcome by the suspense, I dipped my head into my hands and silently prayed while beside me Madame Élisabeth did the same thing . There was terrifying split second of silence before the shouts began again. ‘No children! Sans les enfants!’

The Queen turned and gestured to me, and I rose up from the floor and came shakily forward to took the sobbing Dauphin and Madame Royale by the hand and lead them back into the room. For a brief, breathless instant, I caught a glimpse of the huge crowd, a sea of hostile faces not so far below and gave a shiver of fear, which I quickly hid in case the children noticed and became more frightened. The little Dauphin released my hand  and ran straight into the arms of his aunt, who held him close and kissed his forehead, while Madame Royale preferred to quietly hold hands with her father.

All eyes were on the Queen, who stood alone and vulnerable, dressed only in her yellow and white striped dressing gown and with her wavy fair hair loose about her shoulders, in front of the hostile Parisian crowd. A few muskets were raised towards her, but miraculously no shots were fired and for a while there was a breathless hush as she stood before them, her head held proudly erect and her eyes gazing into an uncertain future.

‘Vive la Reine!’ The first lone cry was like a miracle and it was immediately echoed by a multitude of others. Once again the volatile Parisian canaille had changed their minds. They could always change them back again but for now we were all on the same side. ‘Long live the Queen!’ It was a long time since anyone had heard those words uttered with such enthusiasm by the Parisian populace and I saw that there was not a dry eye in the room. Even the Comte de Provence was openly weeping at that moment, daubing his fat tears with a grimy lawn handkerchief.

Her own eyes swimming with tears, Marie Antoinette graciously inclined her head and swept a low curtsey. La Fayette, regretting the slumber that had led to such disaster, now seized his moment and stepped out on the balcony to stand beside her, and to an ecstatic roar from the crowd he took the Queen’s hand in his and lifted it to his lips in a theatrical gesture redolent of a forgotten chivalry.

‘To Paris! To Paris!’ The chanting was universal and impossible to ignore. The Queen and La Fayette came back into the room and immediately all of her careful poise deserted her and she staggered with exhaustion and had to hold on to the gilded gilt back of a chair for support. The Dauphin ran up to her and hugged her knees. ‘Maman, are the noisy people going away now?’

‘Soon, my darling, soon,’ she whispered, lifting him up, kissing his rosy cheeks and hiding her tears in his shoulder so that he would not see her cry.

The King paced up and down the room, scene of so many court dramas over the centuries since it had been the bedchamber of the great Louis XIV. Outside the cries demanding that the King and his family come to Paris continued and he frowned with concentration. Always hesitant, he was uncertain how to act for the best. Should he leave Versailles, perhaps forever or remain? Which action would best ensure the safety of his realm and above all, his family?

‘I have made my decision,’ he said at last, before waving away the ever present La Fayette, going out on to the balcony once more and raising his hands in a plea for silence. ‘My friends,’ he called, ‘I will go to Paris with my wife and children; I entrust what is most precious to me to the love of my good and loyal subjects.’ His words were greeted with enormous cheers while behind him his wife sobbed uncontrollably.

‘We are leaving Versailles,’ she said. ‘I wish to God that we had left last night when we still had the chance – at least then it would have been of our own free will instead of as prisoners.’ At her words a chill fell upon the room.

Afterwards, I walked wearily back to my rooms that overlooked the Rue des Réservoirs, through silent rooms that had once hummed with vibrant, colourful, glamorous life. All the courtiers had given up their vigil and gone to bed, so that now the only sound to be heard was the tap tap tap of my high heeled shoes against the polished parquet. I paused for a moment and looked out of a window, admiring the pink and purple fingers of the dawn as it rose over the château gardens. It was  a sight that I had seen many times before, mostly while returning from another gaudy, drunken night at the Paris Opéra ball or a night gambling in Lauzun’s smoky, red damask hung salon but never before had it taken on such a poignancy or appeared so bold or beautiful as it did on that final morning at Versailles.

A few Revolutionary relics in the Carnavalet…

14 Jul

A bust of Camille Desmoulins, whose impassioned speech at the Café du Foy, which he may or may not have made at the instigation of the Duc d’Orléans may or may not have kick started the assault on the Bastille. Yes, that’s right – no one is quite sure what happened that afternoon in the Palais Royale but the image of a shy, stammering young journalist leaping onto a table and giving a speech that began one of the most enormous upheavals in early modern history is a compelling one.

Camille’s love and future wife, Lucile Laridon Duplessis, painted by Boilly. Camille met and courted Lucile in the grounds of the Palais du Luxembourg and would later be hired as her tutor, during which time their love grew like that of Abelard and Héloïse. At first her father refused to countenance the match of his generously dowried daughter with the penniless Camille but of course his antics on Bastille Day would soon change matters…

We fans of Marie Antoinette generally imagine her dressed in blue silks and wimsically smiling as she fondled a perfect pink rose but in 1789, she was regarded rather differently by the populace of France – haughty, extravagant, insincere, uncaring, debauched and distant. I think that like a lot of shy people, Marie Antoinette suffered by being thought of as ‘superior’ when in fact she was just hiding her awkwardness.

Attaché case carried by the Jacobin and member of the CPS, Barère de Vieuzac. I always used to be quite fond of Barère because it used to be thought that he was born on the 10th October, which is also my birthday but it now seems that actually he was born on the 10th September so sorry Barère, I am sure you were delightful despite being a Jacobin but I no longer feel any sort of bond with you!

One of the most moving rooms in the whole museum is this little reconstruction of how the royal rooms in the Temple Prison may have looked, using furniture that was actually used by the family during their imprisonment. It’s a lot more cheerful and colourful than you might expect but then these niceties were not to last long as one by one the family’s luxuries were withdrawn and they were parted from each other.

A Wedgewood medallion of the Princesse de Lamballe, maybe dating from one of her excursions to England? I live only a few miles away from the city of Bath in Somerset and have visited the house on the Royal Crescent where the Princesse is said to have stayed during one sojourn in the spa town.

An ink well used by Camille Desmoulins, maybe when he was writing articles for his incendiary Vieux Cordelier or writing love notes to his beloved Lucile.

A bust of Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just, alongside a pistol carried by him at the battle of Valmy. Saint Just was always a huge hero of mine from about the age of twelve onwards when I got him confused with Marguerite’s dashing brother, Armand Saint-Just in The Scarlet Pimpernel (Armand was based on Antoine and I suspect Baroness Orczy was none too pleased when she realised Antoine’s true, less than charming nature).

Ever wondered what Danton’s fork and spoon looked like? Wonder no more! Yes, this fork and spoon have touched the lips of the great man himself.

Robespierre’s very battered looking attaché case that he would have used to cart documents to and from the Committee of Public Safety.

A beaker used by Robespierre while he lived at the home of the Duplay family.

A bit gloomy this one, but this is a pair of Marie Antoinette’s shoes! Very high heeled and elegant, as befits the very finest Parisian shoes!

A lock of Marie Antoinette’s hair – not the pale ash blonde of popular imagining but actually a soft, amber.

Happy Bastille Day!

14 Jul

And on this day, the mighty giant Felix destroyed the feared prison of the Bastille and the streets of Paris were filled with rejoicing…

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