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
In her mention of the 14th of July as likely to bring fresh dangers, she
is alluding to the announcement of an intention of the Jacobins to hold a
fresh festival to commemorate the destruction of the Bastile on the
anniversary of that exploit; a celebration which she had ample reason to
expect would furnish occasion for some fresh tumult and outrage. And we
may remark that in one of these letters she rests her whole hope on
foreign assistance; while in the other, she rejects foreign aid to escape
from her almost hopeless position. But the key to her feeling in both
cases is one and the same. Above all things she was a devoted, faithful
wife and mother. To herself and her own safety she never gave a thought.
Her first duty, she rightly judged, was to the king, and she looked to
such a manifesto as she desired Austria and Prussia to issue, backed by
the movements of a powerful army, as the measure which afforded the best
prospect of saving her husband, who could hardly be trusted to save
himself; while, for the very same reason, she refused to fly without him,
even though flight might have saved her children, her son and heir, as
well as herself, because it would have increased her husband's danger. In
each case her decision was that of a brave and devoted wife, not perhaps
in both instances judicious; for when Prussia did mingle in the contest,
as it did in the first week in July, it evidently increased the perils of
Louis, if indeed they were capable of aggravation, by giving the Jacobins
a plea for raising the cry "that the country was in danger." But in the
second case, in her refusal to flee, and to leave her husband by himself
to confront the existing and impending dangers, she judged rightly and
worthily of herself; and the only circumstance that has prevented her from
receiving the credit due for her refusal to avail herself of Prince
George's offer is that throughout the whole period of the Revolution her
acts of disinterestedness and heroism are so incessant that single deeds
of the kind are lost in the contemplation of her entire career during this
long period of trial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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