Produced by David Widger
Being Secret Memoirs of Madame du Hausset,Lady's Maid to Madame de Pompadour,and of an unknown English Girland the Princess Lamballe
"The dismissal of M. Necker irritated the people beyond description. Theylooked upon themselves as insulted in their favourite. Mob succeededmob, each more mischievous and daring than the former. The Duc d'Orleanscontinued busy in his work of secret destruction. In one of the popularrisings, a sabre struck his bust, and its head fell, severed from itsbody. Many of the rioters (for the ignorant are always superstitious)shrunk back at this omen of evil to their idol. His real friendsendeavoured to deduce a salutary warning to him from the circumstance. Iwas by when the Duc de Penthievre told him, in the presence of hisdaughter, that he might look upon this accident as prophetic of the fateof his own head, as well as the ruin of his family, if he persisted. Hemade no answer, but left the room.
"On the 14th of July, and two or three days preceding, the commotionstook a definite object. The destruction of the Bastille was the pointproposed, and it was achieved. Arms were obtained from the oldpensioners at the Hotel des Invalides. Fifty thousand livres weredistributed among the chiefs of those who influenced the Invalides togive up the arms.
"The massacre of the Marquis de Launay, commandant of the place, and ofM. de Flesselles, and the fall of the citadel itself, were theconsequence.
"Her Majesty was greatly affected when she heard of the murder of theseofficers and the taking of the Bastille. She frequently told me that thehorrid circumstance originated in a diabolical Court intrigue, but neverexplained the particulars of the intrigue. She declared that both theofficers and the citadel might have been saved had not the King's ordersfor the march of the troops from Versailles, and the environs of Paris,been disobeyed. She blamed the precipitation of De Launay in ordering upthe drawbridge and directing the few troops on it to fire upon thepeople. 'There,' she added, 'the Marquis committed himself; as, in caseof not succeeding, he could have no retreat, which every commander shouldtake care to secure, before he allows the commencement of a generalattack.
[Certainly, the French Revolution may date its epoch as far back as thetaking of the Bastille; from that moment the troubles progressivelycontinued, till the final extirpation of its illustrious victims. I wasjust returning from a mission to England when the storms began tothreaten not only the most violent effects to France itself, but to allthe land which was not divided from it by the watery element. The spiritof liberty, as the vine, which produces the most luxurious fruit, whenabused becomes the most pernicious poison, was stalking abroad andrevelling in blood and massacre. I myself was a witness to theenthusiastic national ball given on the ruins of the Bastille, while itwas still stained and reeking with the hot blood of its late keeper,whose head I saw carried in triumph. Such was the effect on me that thePrincesse de Lamballe asked me if I had known the Marquis de Launay. Ianswered in the negative; but told her from the knowledge I had of theEnglish Revolution, I was fearful of a result similar to what followedthe fall of the heads of Buckingham and Stafford. The Princessmentioning my observation to the Duc de Penthievre, they both burst intotears.]
The death of the Dauphin, the horrible Revolution of the 14th of