Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of RoyaltyImbert de Saint-Amand
History
Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty
Imbert de Saint-Amand
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793
Madame Roland's hatred was appeased. The ambitious _bourgeoise_
throned it for the second time at the Ministry of the Interior, and the
Queen groaned in captivity in the Temple tower. The Egeria of the
Girondins had not felt her heart swell with a single movement of pity
for Marie Antoinette. The fatal 10th of August had seemed to her a
personal triumph in which her pride delighted. The parvenue enjoyed
the humiliations of the daughter of the German Cæsars. Her jealous
instincts feasted on the afflictions of the Queen of France and Navarre.
Lamartine, indignant at this cruelty on Madame Roland's part, has
repented of the eulogies he gave her in his _Histoire des Girondins_.
In his _Cours de Littérature_ (Volume XIII. Conversation XXIII.), he
says: "I glided over that medley of intrigue and pomposity which
composed the genius, both feminine and Roman, of this woman. In so
doing, I conceded more to popularity than to truth. I wanted to give a
Cornelia to the Republic. As a matter of fact, I do not know what
Cornelia was, that mother of the {373} Gracchi who brought up
conspirators against the Roman Senate, and trained them to sedition,
that virtue of ambitious commoners. As to Madame Roland, who inflated
a vulgar husband by the breath of her feminine anger against a court
she found odious because it did not open to her upstart vanity, there
was nothing really fine in her except her death. Her rôle had been a
mere parade of true greatness of soul." What Lamartine finds fault
with most of all is her hostility to the martyr Queen. He adds: "She
inspired the Girondins, her intimate friends, with an implacable hatred
against the Queen, already so humiliated and so menaced; she had
neither respect nor pity for this victim; she points her out to the
rebellious multitude. She is no longer a wife, a mother, or a
Frenchwoman. She poses as Nemesis at the door of the Temple, when the
Queen is groaning there over her husband, her children, and herself,
between the throne and the scaffold. This ostentatious stoicism of
implacability is what, in my view, kills the woman in this female
demagogue."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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