Maria Antoinette: Makers of HistoryAbbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
History
Maria Antoinette: Makers of History
Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793
There was at that time standing in the court-yard of the palace a young
man, with the blood boiling with indignation in his veins, in view of
the atrocities of the mob. The ignominious spectacle of the red bonnet
upon the head of the king, as he stood in the recess of the window,
seemed more than this young man could endure, and, turning upon his
heel, he hastened away, exclaiming, "The wretches! the wretches! they
ought to be mown down by grape-shot." This is the first glimpse the
Revolution presents of Napoleon Bonaparte.
But while the king was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the
queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in
another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the
personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be
_infamous_ as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an
Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing all in her power to
induce foreign armies to invade the French empire with fire and sword;
and that she had instigated the king to attempt escape, that he might
head the armies. Maria, conscious of this hatred, was aware that her
presence would only augment the tide of indignation swelling against the
king, and she therefore remained in the bed-chamber with her children.
But her sanctuary was instantly invaded. The door of her apartment had
been, by some friend, closed and bolted. Its stout oaken panels were
soon dashed in, and the door driven from its hinges. A crowd of
miserable women, abandoned to the lowest depths of degradation and
vulgarity, rushed into the apartment, assailing her ears with the most
obscene and loathsome epithets the language could afford. The queen
stood in the recess of a window, with queenly pride curbing her mortal
apprehension. A few friends had gathered around her, and placed a table
before her as a partial protection. Her daughter, an exceedingly
beautiful girl of fourteen years of age, with her light brown hair
floating in ringlets over her fair brow and shoulders, clung to her
mother's bosom as if she thought not of herself, but would only, with
her own body, shield her mother's heart from the dagger of the assassin.
Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a
bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations
of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely
and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in
the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance
pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender
hearted would speak a word of sympathy. A young girl came crowded along,
neatly dressed, and with a pleasing countenance. She, however,
immediately began to revile the queen in the coarsest language of
vituperation.
"Why do you hate me so, my friend?" said the queen, kindly; "have I ever
done any thing to injure or to offend you?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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