MARIE ANTOINETTE 



MARIE DE' MEDICI 



43 



her 5-6, 1789) she alone maintained her courage 

 and she showed herself on tiie balcony to the raginj 

 mob with a serene heroism that for a moment over 

 awed the fiercest into respect. That same day the 

 royal family and the Assembly left Versailles foi 

 Paris amid the plaudits of all the rascaldom of both 

 sexes within the city. But Marie Antoinette 

 lacked consistency even in the part she essayec 

 to play, and to the last she Tailed to understand 

 the nature of the troublous times into which she 

 had been Hung. She had an instinctive abhorrence 

 of the liberal nobles like Lafayette and Mirabeau, 

 and, if she professed to consult them, she also con- 

 sulted with other men, and refused to trust them 

 altogether. Again the indecision of Louis ami his 

 dread of civil war hampered her plans, and the 

 intrigues of the emigres did her cause more liana 

 than all her domestic enemies together. 



The queen was at length prevailed on by Count 

 de Merey-Argenteau, at the instigation of Count 

 de la Marck, to make terms with Mirabeau, and 

 she gave the great tribune an interview at Saint- 

 Cloud, July 3, 1790. But she was too self-willed 

 and independent frankly to follow his advice, 

 for she abhorred his dream of a constitutional 

 monarchy based on the free consent of an en- 

 franchised people. His death in April 1791 re- 

 moved the last hope of saving the monarchy, and 

 less than three months later occurred the fatal 

 fljglit to Bouille at the frontier, intercepted at 

 Varennes, against which Miralieau had ever pleaded 

 as a fatal step. The storming of the Tuileries and 

 slaughter of the brave Swiss guards ( 10th August 

 1792), the transference to the Temple, the trial and 

 execution of the king (21t January 1793), quickly 

 followed, and ere long her son was torn from her 

 arms, and she herself sent to the Conciergerie 

 like a common criminal (2d August 1793). After 

 eight weeks more of sickening insult and brutality, 

 the 'Widow Capet' was herself arraigned in her 

 ragged dress and gray hair before the Revolu- 

 tionary Tribunal. Under the torture of her 

 trial she bore herself with the calm dignity and 

 resignation of the martyr : one truthful touch 

 stands out with infinite pathos across the century 

 between 'she was sometimes observed moving 

 her fingers, as when one plays on the piano.' 

 HIT answers were short with" the simplicity of 

 truth: 'You persist, then, in denial?' 'My plan 

 is not denial : it is the truth I have said, and I 

 persist in that.' One charge unspeakable in its 

 infamy was tendered by Hubert, which he had got 

 her wretched son aged eight years to sign. ' A 

 mother can make no answer to such questions; I 

 ap|>eal to every mother here present,' was her only 

 reply. A deep murmur ran through the court 

 ' Mi -"Table fool,' said Kobespierre, 'he will make 

 our enemies objects of compassion.' After two 

 days and nights of questioning came the inevitable 

 sentence, and on the same day, October 16, 1793, 

 she left the world and all its madness behind her, 

 under the axe of the guillotine. It was just three- 

 ami -twenty years since she had left Vienna amid 

 universal grief, in all the brightness of beauty and 

 hope, 



See the Histories of the French Revolution by Tliiem, 

 Mignut, Michelet, Louis Klanc, Carlyle, Von Sybcl, and 



If M'ir-<.- Xt.-|rli.'tn /i,,*.<i' M : ,-iU , \l:..l;ui,,. <';mi|.:in's 



Htmoire* ittr la Vie privte d* Marie Antoinette ( IH^J ) ; 

 De Lescure's La vi-aie Marie Ant-iinette (1863); 

 D'HunoUtein'f Correspondence inedite de Marie An- 

 toinette ( 1804 ) ; Feuillet de Conches' Lmi.it XVI., Marie 

 Antoinette, et Madame Elizabeth, Lettres et Documents 

 infdiUs ( 18f>5) ; Arneth and Geffrey, Marie Antoinette: 

 Cnrrttponda.net te.i-.rttf entre Marie- Tktrete et le Comte de 

 Mercii-Argenteau ( 1874 ) ; the elaborate studies by M. P. 

 de Nolhao ( 1890 ; trans. 1898) and M. de la Rocheterie 

 ( IWX) ; trans. 1893 ) ; works by Anna Bickncll ( 18! ) and 

 Clara Tschudi (18t8)j M. C. Bishop, The Prison Lift 



of Marie Antoinette (1893); and for the affair of the 

 Diamond Necklace, G. C. D'Est Ange's Marie Antoinette 

 et le Prods da Collier (1889). For an account of her 

 portraits, abont 500 in number, see L ml Ronald Gower's 

 Iwnographie de Marie A nloinetle ( Paris, 1883 ); and for 

 the closing scenes in her life, Campardon's Tribunal Rtvo- 

 lutionnaire (voL i.) and Marie Antoinette a la Concier- 

 yerie (1803), Lord Ronald Gower's Last Days of Marie 

 Antoinette (1885), and L. de Saint- Amand, Let dernien 

 Annies de Marie Antoinette ( 1889). 



Marie de France, a poetess of whom but 

 little is known with any degree of certainty, save 

 that she lived in England under Henry III., and 

 translated into French from an English version of 

 a Latin translation of the Greek the Ysopet, a 

 collection of 103 moralised fables, in octosyllabic 

 couplets, 'for the love of Count William' (supposed 

 to be William Longsword of Salisbury). These 

 fables are natural and happy, as well as graceful 

 in versification*, and give their authoress a place in 

 that line of descent which ended with La Fontaine. 

 But her greatest work was the twelve (or fourteen) 

 Lais, delightful and genuinely poetic narrative 

 poems, mostly amatory in character, in octosyllabic 

 verse, the longest nearly twelve hundred lines, the 

 shortest just over a hundred. The word Lai is of 

 Breton origin, and most probably referred originally 

 to the style of music witn which the harper accom- 

 panied his verse. The titles of Marie s lais are 

 Guigemar, Equitan, Le Fraisne, Bisclavret, Lan- 

 vttl, Les Doits Amanz, Yonec, Laustic, Milun, 

 Chaitivel, Chievrefoil, Eliduc ; and to these most 

 add Gradient and L'Espine.. Of the lais the best 

 edition is that of Karl Warnke (Halle, 1885), 

 forming vol. iii. of Suchier's Bibliotheca Norman- 

 nica, enriched with invaluable comparative notes 

 by Reinhold Krihler. They were paraphrased rather 

 than translated by the late Mr O'Shauglmessy as 

 Lays of France (1872). A third work sometimes 

 ascribed to Marie is a poem of 2300 verses on 

 the purgatory of St Patrick. The best edition of 

 the lays and fables together is that of Roquefort 

 (2 vols. 1820). 



Marie de' Medici, wife of Henry IV. of 

 France, was the daughter of Francis I., Grand- 

 duke of Tuscany, and was born at Florence, 26th 

 April 1573. She was married to Henry, 16th 

 December 1600, and in the following September 

 gave birth to a son, afterwards Louis XIII. The 

 union, however, did not prove happy. Marie was 

 an obstinate and passionate woman, and her 

 quarrels with the king soon became the talk of 

 Paris. She was wholly under the influence of her 

 favourites, Leonore Galigai and her husband Con- 

 cini, and was by them encouraged in her dislike 

 to her husband. The murder of Henry (May 14, 

 1610) did nt greatly grieve her, although it is not 

 true that she was privy to the plot. For the next 

 seven years she governed as regent, but proved as 

 worthless a ruler. as she had been a wife. After 

 the murder of Concini (24th April 1617), whom she 

 !iod created Marquis d'Ancre, a domestic revolution 

 ,ook place, and the young Louis XIII. assumed 

 oyal power. The queen was confined to her own 

 louse, and her son refused to see her. Her par- 

 isans tried to bring about a civil war, but tlieir 

 attempts proved futile ; and by the advice of 

 Itiehelieu, then Bishop of Lucon, she made her 

 submission to her son in 1619, and took her place 

 it court. Marie hoped to win over Richelieu to 

 icr party, but she soon found out that he had no 

 mind to l>e ruled by her, whereupon she tried to 

 indermine his inlluence with the king. Her in- 

 ^rigues for this purpose failed : she was imprisoned 

 n Compifegne, whence she escaped and fled to 

 Brussels in 1631. Her last years were spent in 

 itter destitution, and she is said to have died in 

 a hayloft at Cologne, 3d July 1642. She loved tlie 



