Free The Lost King of France: A True Story of Revolution, Revenge, and DNA by Deborah Cadbury

they protect the king or further the interests of the crowd? At midnight, La Fayette was presented before the king and reassured him that the National Guard would stop the mob from attacking the palace. Comforted by this, finally, at two in the morning the royal family attempted to get some rest. “My mother knew that their chief object was to kill her,” wrote her daughter. “Nevertheless in spite of that, she made no
sign, but retired to her room with all possible coolness and courage … directing Madame de Tourzel to take her son instantly to the king if she had heard any noise in the night.”
    However, at five in the morning, some women discovered that the gate to the Cour des Princes was not properly locked. There was a call to action. The crowd surged into the palace, and entered the inner courtyard, the Cour de Marbre, by the royal quarters. Many rushed straight up the stairs leading to the queen’s apartments, yelling obscenities. A guard later reported that he heard, “We’ll cut off her head … tear her heart out … fry [ fricasser ] her liver … make her guts into ribbons and even then it would not be all over.” One of the bodyguards tried to defend the stairway. He was stabbed with pikes and knives and dragged half alive into the courtyard where his head was chopped off with an axe. Inside the palace, according to Marie-Thérèse, another guard, “though grievously wounded, dragged [himself] to my mother’s door, crying out for her to fly and bolt the doors behind her.” Just at this point, the queen’s femme de chambre opened the door of the queen’s antechamber and was horrified to see this bodyguard holding a musket valiantly across the door as he was struck down by the mob. “His face was covered with blood,” wrote Madame Campan. “He turned round and exclaimed, ‘Save the queen, Madame! They are come to assassinate her.’ She hastily shut the door on the unfortunate victim of duty and fastened it with a great bolt.” Seconds later, “the wretches flung themselves on him and left him bathed in blood.”
    Hearing firing and shrieks outside her door, “my mother sprang from her bed and, half dressed, ran to my father’s apartment, but the door of it was locked within,” wrote Marie-Thérèse. Within moments, the rioters had burst into the queen’s empty bedroom and cut her bedclothes to shreds with their sabers and knives, to cries of “kill the bitch,” or “kill the whore!” Those protecting the king did not realize it was the queen herself—not rioters—at the door. For several terrifying minutes she was trapped, hammering on the door, unable to enter the king’s apartments. “Just at the moment that the wretches forced the door of my mother’s room, so that one
instant later, she would have been taken without means of escape … the man on duty … recognized my mother’s voice and opened the door to her.”
    In the frenzy of the night, the king was trying to reach the queen’s apartment to bring her to safety; Madame de Tourzel was trying to protect the dauphin; the queen went in frantic search of Marie-Thérèse. Gradually, they all reunited in the Salon de l’Oeuil de Boeuf, where they could hear axes and bars thumping against the door as the guards tried to drive the rioters away with their bayonets. It was only after they had driven the rioters outside to the courtyard that La Fayette finally emerged with his men and managed to save the bodyguards.
    Outside in the marble courtyard, the crowd demanded to see the king. He emerged onto the balcony, but this did not appease the crowd who began to shout for the queen. Inside, Marie-Antoinette turned white. “All her fears were visible on her face.” Dazed and numbed by the attempt on her life, she hesitated. Everyone in the room urged her not to face the crowd. Outside, the yells echoed ever more insistently around the courtyard and rose in a great cry, “The queen to the balcony!” Summoning extraordinary