The Girls' Book of Famous Queens

How startlingly the sorrowful present contrasts with the gay and brilliant past, when, in her bridal dress of satin, pearls, and diamonds, the Duc de Cossé-Brissac led her to the balcony of the Tuileries to gratify the eager desire of the dense multitude to see her, and bade her behold in them two hundred thousand adorers, while shouts of “Vive la Dauphine!” rent the air. Marie Antoinette was then a youthful bride. Twenty-three years have passed away, and she is now a widow. In a faded black dress, she stands in the theatre of that same palace of the Tuileries, amidst a throng of canaille, to be tried for her life by men whose own lives would be the forfeit, if either compassion or justice should move them to find her innocent. Alas! the daughter of the Cæsars, she whom Edmund Burke had seen, “glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy,” is hurled low indeed. And yet, to me, as she stands there in her frayed and patched black gown, with her widow’s cap upon her almost white hair, before her judges, and her jury, and the crowded tribunes, Marie Antoinette is a far nobler, far grander figure, than when a blooming bride she stood upon the Tuileries balcony, surrounded by the acclamations of the multitude, or when, as queen of France, blazing with diamonds, and in all the pomp and splendor of regality, she received the homage of her courtiers in the gilded galleries of Versailles.

The tribunal which judged the queen was composed of a president and four judges, the public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, – a man who even at that time was notorious as being amongst the most inhuman of the monsters who then governed revolutionary France, – the chief registrar, and fifteen jurymen. Fouquier-Tinville had himself drawn out at great length the act of accusation. He looked upon it as his chef d’œuvre, and Chauveau-Lagarde, the queen’s counsel, did not exaggerate when he called it a “work of the devil.” In it the queen was compared to Messalina, Brunehild, Frédégond, and the Medici. He declared that “since her arrival in France she had been the curse and leech of the French nation; that she had maintained a secret correspondence with the king of Bohemia and Hungary; that her aim was the ruin of the country; that by her instigation, and in concert with the brothers of Louis XVI. and the infamous Calonne, formerly minister of finance, she had lavished the wealth of the nation, the spoils of the sweat of the people, in maintaining her criminal expenditure and in paying the agents of her treasonable intrigues; that she had sent millions out of the country to the emperor, in order to maintain the war against the republic, and that she had thus exhausted the revenues of the country. Further, that since the commencement of the Revolution she had not ceased an instant from maintaining a treasonable correspondence with the enemy, and, by every means in her power, aided and abetted a counter revolution.” He then went back and harped, at great length, upon the affair of the Gardes du Corps at Versailles in 1789, and also on the flight to Varennes; accused her of the loss of life on the 17th of July, 1792, at the Champs de Mars, and declared that owing to her, and her alone, the massacre occurred at Nancy and elsewhere. “Thus this man raved on in an endless series of accusations, which seem more as if they came from the disordered brain of a homicidal maniac than from a man in his senses.”

Indeed, one can only believe that some of the writings and actions of the actors in the year of terror, 1793, were owing to a state of madness. It is said, and on good authority, that Fouquier-Tinville ultimately confessed to being pursued by horrible visions, saying that he saw the spirits of those he had condemned to death menacing him, not in his dreams, like Richard III., but in broad daylight. And well he might; for between the 10th of March, 1793, and the 27th of July of the following year, two thousand six hundred and sixty-nine victims were sent from that tribunal to the guillotine.

Then followed the second day. “What is your name?” inquired one of the judges.

“Marie Antoinette de Lorraine d’Autriche,” answered the queen.

“What is your condition?” was the next question.

“Widow of Louis, king of France.”

“What is your age?”

“Thirty-eight.”

The act of accusation was then read, and the witnesses appeared. Of these there were forty-one, – men of all sorts and conditions of life, and who were ready to swear anything, however improbable, however atrocious, against the queen. All through the long hours of that awful day the different witnesses were questioned and cross-questioned. She saw again faces familiar to her in past years, faces that must have recalled Versailles and the Trianon; and with what feelings of horror must she have recognized Simon, her son’s jailer and persecutor, among that crowd of witnesses! When the charges relative to the queen’s treatment of her son were again alluded to, the queen deigned no reply. Seeing this, one of the jurors called the attention of the president to her silence. One can imagine what a hush must at that moment have fallen on that great crowd, eager to hear what the queen would answer to such an infamy. But Marie Antoinette was equal, aye, more than equal, to the occasion. She rose proudly from her chair, and in a majestic voice exclaimed: “If I have not answered, it is because nature herself refuses to answer such an accusation made to a mother. I appeal to all that may be present.”

“A thrill ran through that vast hall – a thrill that has not ceased to be felt by all who can enter into what the feelings of that mother were at such a moment. No wonder that when Robespierre heard what a sensation had been made by the sublime manner in which the queen had met that charge, and the effect it had upon the audience, he, being then at dinner, should have broken his plate with rage, and cursed the folly of Fouquier-Tinville in preferring it.” At last all was over, and the queen was asked if she had anything to say. “I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains. Take it, but do not make me suffer long.” Then in the dignity of silence, and without the moving of a muscle, she listened to the sentence condemning her to die. It was ten minutes past four in the morning of the 16th of October. The queen had, with hardly an interval, endured this trial more than twenty hours. “Rising from her seat, she walked away calmly and serenely, leaving her judges, or rather murderers, without one look of reproach or shade of anger. But on nearing the portion of the hall where, beyond the barriers, the mob was collected, she raised somewhat her noble head. A great French painter has left a picture of this scene. The queen faces the spectator, as she walks along the side of the barriers, above which the crowd are eagerly scanning her; behind follow the gens d’armes with shouldered muskets; beyond, under the dim light of a lamp, appear the faces of the judges, a lurid background. Delaroche has introduced the thin, handsome face of a youth who seems to feel the iniquity of the transaction keenly: we recognize the features of Bonaparte. Next to the almost angelic sublimity of the figure of the queen, the most touching thing in the picture is the face of a young girl, who gazes, with a look of ineffable pity, through her tears, at the queen as she walks by.”

Truly writes Sainte-Beuve. “I do not believe,” he says, “that a monument of more atrocious stupidity, of greater ignominy for our species, can exist, than this trial of Marie Antoinette. When one reflects that a century which considered itself enlightened and of the most refined civilization, ends with public acts of such barbarity, one begins to doubt of human nature itself, and to fear that the brute, which is always in human nature, has the ascendency.”

All Paris was under arms on this morning of the 16th of October. The roll of the drum was heard through all the sections; thirty thousand troops lined the streets along which lay the route of the queen’s passage. The bridges were guarded with cannon, by which stood the gunners with lighted matches. Artillery was placed also upon the squares and points of junction. At ten o’clock no carriage was allowed in any of the streets that lie between the Conciergerie and the Place de la Revolution. All Paris was patrolled, and all this martial pomp, which sounds as though the army of the enemy were at the very gates of Paris, had been brought out to see a woman die!

Before the Conciergerie, before those beautiful iron gates on which the royal arms of France and the golden lilies are conspicuous, the crowd was thickest; every window had its groups of spectators, every housetop had its crowd of people.

There stands the wretched open cart, with its single horse, its plank the only seat. There is a stir among the crowd, and the queen ascends the prison steps. On seeing the cart, she makes an involuntary pause. It is but an instant. Then, with proud step and undaunted mien, Marie Antoinette advances. A moment more, and she is sealed in the cart. Sanson takes his place behind her.

Both he and his assistant have their three-cornered hats under their arms. “On that occasion the only people who behaved with decency were the executioners.”

Slowly the cart winds its way through the Rue Saint-Honoré. The rabble yell, shout, and mouth at her, while for the last time falls on her ear that hateful cry, “À bas l’Autrichienne! à bas l’Autrichienne!”

Yet as much a queen is she, – this silent white-robed figure, so simple, yet so grand in its forlornness, – as when in her gilded coach, surrounded by a brilliant body-guard of cavalry, she swept through the Avenue des Champs Élysées, to the echoing shouts of “Vive la reine!”

“You all know the Place de la Concorde,’Tis hard by the Tuileries’ wall.’Mid terraces, fountains, and statues,There rises an obelisk tall.”

Ah! what a sight was this mighty Place de la Concorde, then the Place de la Revolution, on that bright October morning, filled with a vast and silent throng, while the splendid palace and gardens of the Tuileries, where so often the queen had been hailed with acclamations, the spacious Elysian Fields, the pride of Paris, were all spread around, as if in mockery of the sacrifice which was there to be offered; and in the centre, sublime in its terrific grandeur, towered the blood-red posts of the guillotine. Slowly the cart made its way between the noble buildings of the “Garde Meuble” and the Admiralty, and finally reached the foot of the scaffold.

As the queen mounted the slippery steps, she trod upon the foot of the executioner. “Pardon me,” said Marie Antoinette, with as much courtesy as if she were addressing a grand seigneur in the palace of Versailles. Kneeling, she uttered a brief prayer, and then turning her eyes to the distant towers of the Temple, exclaimed, “Adieu, my children; I go to rejoin your father.”

She was bound to the plank. The gleaming axe slid through the groove, and the long and dreadful tragedy of the life of Marie Antoinette was closed.

That night, upon the records of the cemetery of the Madeline, was made this entry: —

“For the coffin of the Widow Capet, – six livres.”

“The Revolution,” says De Tocqueville, “will ever remain in darkness to those who do not look beyond it. It can only be comprehended by the light of the ages which preceded it. Without a clear view of society in the olden time, of its laws, its faults, its prejudices, its sufferings, and its greatness, it is impossible to understand the conduct of the French during the sixty years which have followed its fall.”

If absolute power could ever be fitly confided to mortal man, where could nobler depositaries of that high trust have been found than in the succession of great men who fill up the interval in the history of France from the accession of Henry IV. to the death of Louis XIV.?

“What ruler of mankind was ever gifted with a spirit more genial, or with views more comprehensive, than those of Henry IV.? or with an integrity and a patriotism more noble than that of Sully? or with an energy of will superior to that of Richelieu? or with subtlety more profound than that of Mazarin? or with a zeal and activity surpassing that of Colbert? or with greater decision of character than Louvois? or with a majesty transcending that of Louis XIV?” And yet, what were the results of so much genius and intellectual power when intrusted with political powers so vast and unrestricted? The favorable results were to add to the greatness of France, and to give birth to some undying traditions, pointing to her still more extensive aggrandizement. The unfavorable results were to produce every possible variety of internal and external misgovernment; to promote wars more sanguinary than had ever before been waged between Christian nations; to produce a waste of treasure so vast, that the simple truth seems fabulous; to kindle persecutions which altogether eclipse, in their enormity, those to which the early Christians were subjected by the emperors of Rome; and to corrupt the moral sense of the people by an exhibition, at the court of their sovereigns, of a profligacy of manners better befitting a prince of the barbarians than a king of France.

According to the doctrine of M. Thomas, there is a general law which regulates the progress of political society. “Emerging from chaos, where its elements battle with each other in wild confusion, it makes a steadfast, though it may be a tardy, progress toward that perfect symmetry and order in which its ultimate perfection consists.”

Thus the anarchy of the tenth and eleventh centuries was the chaotic period of France. Out of that abyss first rose the feudal oligarchy, – a state of orderly disorder. Then succeeded the Capetian despotism, destined to crush, one by one, the countless feudal privileges, whether legislative, administrative, or judicial. When the iron grasp of “royalty” had subdued and conquered them all, then “royalty,” in the midst of the triumphs she had won, presented herself to the nation in the person of Louis XIV., the king par excellence, the one gigantic privilege, the conqueror and survivor of all the rest. This was the golden age of kings. The crown was everything; the people, nothing. Robbed under the name of custom and of law, the peasants toiled joylessly from the cradle to the grave. Their sons were sent to strew Europe with their bodies, in wars undertaken at the nod of a courtesan. Their wives and daughters were torn from them; and for the purpose of supporting lascivious, and riotous splendor, of building Parcs aux Cerfs, of pensioning discarded favorites, and of enriching corrupt minions of every stamp, they were taxed, – so taxed that the light and air of heaven hardly came to them free; and, sunk in the dregs of indigence, a short crop compelled them to live on food that the hounds of their taskmasters would reject; and, finally, when in their agony they asked some mitigation of their hard fate, they were answered by the bayonets of foreign mercenaries.

“And a people, – stout manhood, gentle womanhood, gray-haired age, and tender infancy, might turn their pale faces upward and shriek for food, while fierce, licentious nobles would scornfully bid them eat grass.”

Such was the condition of the greater part of the French people during the reign of that vilest of monarchs, King Louis XV.

“Royalty” had sinned right royally. Right royally must “royalty” atone for it. And the guillotine upon the Place de la Concorde was but the expiation of St. Bartholomew, of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and of the Parc aux Cerfs.

And though we know that a people, crushed and downtrodden, are striving to free themselves from lawless oppression, we cannot but sympathize with Marie Antoinette, through no fault of her own made queen of France, to reap the whirlwind of wicked deeds sown by her husband’s royal ancestors.

Frederick the Great, amid the battle-smoke at Sohr, or Napoleon, upon the ensanguined field of Waterloo, never struggled harder in support of their respective causes, than did she, in the salons of Versailles and the Tuileries, to sustain the falling monarchy.

“And when, at last, the long conflict was terminated, and her combined enemies were victorious, when bereft of her throne, of her husband, of her children, and of her liberty, she was a prisoner in the hands of those whose unalterable object was her destruction, she bore her accumulated miseries with a serene resignation, an intrepid fortitude, a true heroism of soul, of which the history of the world does not afford a brighter example.”

In the royal burying-vault of the Bourbons, at the Cathedral of St. Denis, now rest the remains of her, – once the pride and joy of France, – the beautiful, unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette.

Grandeur, triumphs, sorrows, all are over.

“Ashes to ashes,Dust to dust.”

THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

A.D. 1763-1814

“Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown.” – Shakespeare.

“Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness.” – Shakespeare.

STRANGER than fiction are the facts of history; and nowhere, among the imaginary characters of romance and poetry, can be found a story of a life more marvellously varied in experience, more weirdly strange in its many thrilling scenes of unutterable misery or dazzlingly triumphant splendor, than the history of the Empress Josephine affords.

But remarkable as were the events of her life, her character was still more remarkable. With no early advantages of education, outside of the fashionable accomplishments of music, drawing, and dancing; by her self-taught acquirements, and diligent study, together with an intuitive perception and aptitude, which enabled her mind to grasp the gravest questions, she was in after-life a most brilliant conversationalist; and by her comprehensive genius and marvellous political foresight, she became the safest, wisest, and most far-seeing of all Napoleon’s advisers and counsellors. When influenced by her persuasive voice, prompted by a heart incapable of any motive but that of the sternest rectitude, and most exalted and unselfish devotion, Napoleon’s acts were always to be commended; and so highly did he prize her counsel, that he called her his “Mentor.”

Never did she advise him to a false step; and history has shown that, regarding those plans and deeds of Napoleon, which results have proved to have been unwise or grievous mistakes, the gentle voice of Josephine had never failed to give prophetic warning.

As Napoleon stands forth pre-eminent amongst the famous men of history, so does the name of Josephine shine with undying lustre among those of the most celebrated heroines of the world. We are dazzled by her gorgeous state and magnificence as empress. We admire her keen intellect and exquisite tact, which never failed to suggest the most perfect and pleasing demeanor, under every emergency, in a time of many unsettled political opinions and tottering thrones. But we love the gentle, unselfish woman, whose heart ever responded to every call for sympathy; whose hand was ever open to bestow benefits; and whose marvellous heroism could support her in the midst of such terrible reverses and peculiar trials as only a woman’s heart could suffer, and only a woman’s love could endure.

In writing the history of Josephine, we are forced to look upon the darker side of Napoleon’s character. From the time he ceased to heed her loving voice, – the persuasive sweetness of which, he himself acknowledged; declaring, “that the first applause of the French people sounded to my ear sweet as the voice of Josephine,” – from that time, the hitherto invincible Napoleon made one false step after another, allowing himself to be influenced by ambitious flatterers and deceived by evil counsellors; following the ignis fatuus of an overweening ambition and thirst for power, which had taken the place of the noble spirit of aspiring to the uplifting of his countrymen and defending the sacred rights of the people, which had actuated his former deeds, and covered his name with the splendid glory and well-deserved honor which he had before achieved.

But now even his transcendent genius and glorious deeds of valor are to be tarnished by grievous mistakes, and even crime.

The first false step taken, his downfall was as terrible and rapid as his uprising had been sudden and glorious.

Already evil counsellors are whispering in his ear their diabolical advice. Just here, with all our admiration for Napoleon, we are amazed at him. That a man possessing such great genius, and with such far-reaching intuitions, should have allowed his mind and deeds to be influenced by the base flatterers who surrounded him, is strange indeed. That Napoleon should not have discovered the Mephistopheles, in Fouché, is surprising; equally amazing, that he should have become so blinded as to turn from his truest friends and most unselfish advisers, and have bared his breast to the poisonous fangs of the wily serpents, who hissed around him like a nest of rattlesnakes.

That steadfastness of purpose which made Napoleon so invincible in overcoming the most stupendous difficulties when his cause was righteous, and which made him the wonder of the world, became the greatest obstacle in his way when his cause was wrong and his resolves pernicious.

The very element in his nature which made him transcendent for good, rendered him also powerful for evil, when his resolution had once been taken in a wrong direction. His unconquerable will, which bore him upward through the most overwhelming difficulties, and crowned him with well-merited success, when his aspirations were inspired by true patriotism and the laudable desire to benefit his country, – that same unconquerable will became his bane, and led him into the most lamentable errors when his former high aspirations had been supplanted by personal ambition and inordinate desire for power.

We cannot give a consecutive history of Napoleon’s errors and downfall in this sketch, but they will appear from time to time, as we trace a short outline of the life of Josephine. We do not pretend to say that Josephine always consciously guided Napoleon’s career and moulded the events of his life. His own genius raised him to his exalted position, we admit; but we do contend that with Josephine he prospered, and without her he fell.

And according to many authorities, it was Josephine’s bridal gift to him that gave him the command of the army of Italy; for it was Barras who recommended Bonaparte to the convention; and it was Barras who assured Madame de Beauharnais that if she married General Bonaparte he would contrive to have him appointed to that command.

We have space but to give two scenes in the life of Josephine before she became Madame Bonaparte. The former occurred upon the island of Martinique, when Josephine was a young girl; the latter, after she had become Vicomtesse de Beauharnais.

One day, when Josephine was about fifteen years of age, she was walking through the spacious grounds of her uncle’s West Indian plantation, in the island of Martinique, when she observed a number of negro girls gathered around an old woman who was engaged in telling their fortunes. Josephine, with girlish curiosity, drew near; whereupon, the old sibyl seized her hand, and, reading the lines there, appeared to be greatly moved.

“What do you see?” inquired Josephine.

“You will not believe me if I speak,” answered the fortune-teller.

“Speak on, good mother,” said Josephine; “what have I to fear or hope?”

“On your own head be it then; listen,” said the old sibyl.

“You will be married soon; that union will not be happy; you will become a widow, and then, – you will be queen of France! Some happy years will be yours; but you will die in a hospital, amid civil commotion;” after saying which, the old woman speedily disappeared.

Josephine thought little of this matter at the time, and only laughed about it with her friends; and when she was residing at Navarre, after the divorce, she thus commented upon it: —

“On account of the seeming absurdity of this ridiculous prediction, I thought little of the affair. But afterwards, when my husband had perished on the scaffold, in spite of my better judgment this prediction forcibly recurred to my mind; and though I was then myself in prison, the transaction assumed a less improbable character, and when I, myself, had been also condemned to die, I comforted my companions, who were weeping around me, by smilingly exclaiming: —