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

descending, the only sound the hammers of workmen fastening the shutters. Now the king, impassive and silent, was a consenting victim to the barbarity of the mob, as he allowed his family to be led in humiliation to Paris. Inside the coach, he held a handkerchief to his face to hide his shame and tears. Next to him was the queen, clutching her four-year-old son tightly, her expression bearing “the marks of violent grief.” She tried to ignore the poissardes who climbed onto the carriage, yelling still more insults and abuse at her. “Along the whole way, the brigands never ceased firing their muskets … and shouted Vive la Nation!” wrote Marie-Thérèse. Occasionally the young dauphin—terrified as this horrific grown-up world suddenly burst in on his orderly life with such force—bravely leaned out of the window and pleaded with the crowds not to harm his mother. “Grâce pour Maman! Grâce pour Maman,” he cried. “Spare my mother, spare my mother.”

Chapter Three
    THE TUILERIES
    The Tuileries Palace, a large jail filled with the condemned, stood amid the celebration of destruction. Those sentenced also amused themselves as they waited for the cart, the clipping, and the red shirt they had put out to dry. And through the windows, the queen’s circle could be seen, stunningly illuminated.
    —CHATEAUBRIAND, MÉMORIES D’OUTRE-TOMBE
     
     
     
     
     
    T he royal family was taken to the Tuileries, a sixteenth-century palace in the heart of Paris by the Seine. For over sixty years it had been abandoned as a royal residence, and servants and artisans had settled into the rabbit warren of dark chambers and seemingly endless, dimly lit galleries and stairways. The place was crowded and in disrepair. Rooms were hurriedly prepared for the royal family, but it was soon found that the doors to the dauphin’s room would not close and had to be barricaded with furniture. “Isn’t it ugly here, Mama,” said Louis-Charles. Marie-Antoinette replied, “Louis XIV was happy here. You should not ask for more.” Yet he was clearly anxious. The young child who had lived surrounded by richness and elegance, with never a cross word, found, in the space of a few days, his world had become an unrecognizable, frightening chaos. The queen asked the Marquise de Tourzel to watch over him all night.
    Woken by the clamor of the crowd outside their windows in the gardens of the Tuileries, Louis-Charles was still terrified. “Good God, Mama! Is it still yesterday?” he cried as he threw himself in her arms. Struggling to
understand their change in fortunes, later he went up to his father and asked why his people, who once loved him so well, were “all at once so angry with him and what he had done to irritate them so much?” The king took his young son on his lap. “I wanted money to pay the expenses occasioned by wars,” he replied. He carefully tried to explain how he had tried, unsuccessfully, to raise money through the parlements and then through the Estates-General. “When they were assembled they required concessions of me which I could not make, either with due respect for myself or with justice to you, who will be my successor. Wicked men, inducing the people to rise, have occasioned the excesses of the last few days; the people must not be blamed for them.”
    The king and queen were forced to face the fact that they were now detained in Paris indefinitely—at the people’s pleasure. They no longer had their own bodyguards; the Tuileries was surrounded by the National Guard who answered to the Assembly. With six armed guards constantly tailing them and their movements closely monitored, the queen quickly made the young prince understand the importance of treating everyone about him politely and “with affability”—even those whom they distrusted. The dauphin “took great pains” to please any visitors. When he had an opportunity to speak to any important dignitaries, he often looked for reassurance from his