MARIE ANTOINETTE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE PYRENEES PARIS HILLS AND THE SEA ON NOTHING AND KINDRED SUBJECTS ON EVERYTHING EMMANUEL BURDEN, MERCHANT THE CHANGE IN THE CABINET ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: THE LAST ACT OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY ORDER GIVEN ON 10TH AUGUST, 1792, TO THE GUARD AT THE TUILERIES TO CEASE FIRE AND RETURN TO BARRACKS _On the authenticity of this document see Appendix C_ ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _MARIE ANTOINETTE_ BY H. BELLOC πολυ κρεισσων ἡ αναγκη WITH THIRTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS AND FIVE MAPS THIRD EDITION METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _First Published_ - _October 14th, 1909_ _Second Edition_ - _January 1910_ _Third Edition_ - _1910_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TO _GEORGE WYNDHAM_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTORY NOTE THE eighteenth century, which had lost the appetite for tragedy and almost the comprehension of it, was granted, before it closed, the most perfect subject of tragedy which history affords. The Queen of France whose end is but an episode in the story of the Revolution stands apart in this: that while all around her were achieved the principal miracles of the human will, she alone suffered, by an unique exception, a fixed destiny against which the will seemed powerless. In person she was not considerable, in temperament not exalted; but her fate was enormous. It is profitable, therefore, to abandon for a moment the contemplation of those great men who recreated in Europe the well-ordered State, and to admire the exact convergence of such accidents as drew around Marie Antoinette an increasing pressure of doom. These accidents united at last: they drove her with a precision that was more than human, right to her predestined end.