The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of FranceYonge, Charles Duke
History
The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France
Yonge, Charles Duke
Marie Antoinette, Queen, consort of Louis XVI, King of France, 1755-1793
He was now wholly disarmed. To render his defeat in the impending struggle
more certain, one of the ministers, Servan, himself proposed a levy of
twenty thousand fresh soldiers, to be stationed permanently at Paris, and
this motion also was passed. Again Louis could not venture to withhold his
sanction from the bill, though he comforted himself by dismissing the
mover, with two of his colleagues, Roland and Clavière. Roland's dismissal
had indeed become indispensable, since, on the preceding day, he had had
the audacity to write him an insolent letter, composed by his ferocious
wife, which in express terms threatened him with death "if he did not give
satisfaction to the Revolution.[10]" Nor was Madame Roland inclined to be
satisfied with the murder of the king and queen. As has been already
mentioned, she at the same time urged upon her submissive husband the
assassination of Dumouriez, who, having intelligence of her enmity, began
in self-defense to connect himself with the Jacobins. On the dismissal of
Roland and the others, he had exchanged the foreign port-folio for that of
war, and was practically the prime minister, being in fact the only one
whom Louis admitted to any degree of confidence; but this arrangement
lasted less than a single week. Louis had yielded to and adopted his
advice on every point but one. He had sanctioned the dismissal of the
Constitutional Guard, and the formation of the new body of troops, which,
no one doubted, was intended to be used against himself; but he was as
firmly convinced as ever that his religious duty bound him to refuse his
assent to the decree against the priests, and he refused to do a violence
to his conscience, and to commit what he regarded as a sin. But this very
decree was the one which Dumouriez regarded as the most dangerous one for
him to reject, as being that which the Assembly was most firmly resolved
to make law; and, as his most vigorous remonstrances failed to shake the
king's resolution on this point, he resigned his post as a minister, and
repaired to the Flemish frontier to take the command of the army, which
greatly needed an able leader.
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Insurrection of June 20th.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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