Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 5: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the QueenCampan, Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette)
History
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Volume 5: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen
Campan, Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette)
France -- Court and courtiers; Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793
About four in the afternoon I went across the terrace to Madame Victoire's
apartments; three men had stopped under the windows of the throne-chamber.
"Here is that throne," said one of them aloud, "the vestiges of which will
soon be sought for." He added a thousand invectives against their
Majesties. I went in to the Princess, who was at work alone in her
closet, behind a canvass blind, which prevented her from being seen by
those without. The three men were still walking upon the terrace; I
showed them to her, and told her what they had said. She rose to take a
nearer view of them, and informed me that one of them was named
Saint-Huruge; that he was sold to the Duc d'Orleans, and was furious
against the Government, because he had been confined once under a 'lettre
de cachet' as a bad character.
The King was not ignorant of these popular threats; he also knew the days
on which money was scattered about Paris, and once or twice the Queen
prevented my going there, saying there would certainly be a riot the next
day, because she knew that a quantity of crown pieces had been distributed
in the faubourgs.
[I have seen a six-franc crown piece, which certainly served to pay some
wretch on the night of the 12th of July; the words "Midnight, 12th July,
three pistols," were rather deeply engraven on it. They were, no doubt, a
password for the first insurrection. --MADAME COMPAN]
On the evening of the 14th of July the King came to the Queen's
apartments, where I was with her Majesty alone; he conversed with her
respecting the scandalous report disseminated by the factious, that he had
had the Chamber of the National Assembly undermined, in order to blow it
up; but he added that it became him to treat such absurd assertions with
contempt, as usual; I ventured to tell him that I had the evening before
supped with M. Begouen, one of the deputies, who said that there were very
respectable persons who thought that this horrible contrivance had been
proposed without the King's knowledge. "Then," said his Majesty, "as the
idea of such an atrocity was not revolting to so worthy a man as M.
Begouen, I will order the chamber to be examined early to-morrow morning."
In fact, it will be seen by the King's, speech to the National Assembly,
on the 15th of July, that the suspicions excited obtained his attention.
"I know," said he in the speech in question, "that unworthy insinuations
have been made; I know there are those who have dared to assert that your
persons are not safe; can it be necessary to give you assurances upon the
subject of reports so culpable, denied beforehand by my known character?"
The proceedings of the 15th of July produced no mitigation of the
disturbances. Successive deputations of poissardes came to request the
King to visit Paris, where his presence alone would put an end to the
insurrection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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