La Conciergerie Where Marie Antoinette Spent Her Final Days

It is so ironic that la Conciergerie, the medieval prison where Marie Antoinette,  spent her final days being insulted, taunted, humiliated, and hated has been the star draw for this haunting yet stunning edifice!

Advertised as Marie Antoinette’s prison, I decided to go back again after several years.  The first time, years ago, I felt too overwhelmed with the thought of such an awful destiny she faced alone to even approach her cell.

This time I made it through the shadowy raw eeriness of the impending doom and raw cruelty of Marie Antoinette’s death.    When grief becomes a shadow you can’t escape, death is no longer the stranger you hope never to meet.

Last autumn, the whole world was grieving the death of the Queen Elizabeth of England, where the monarchy remains a source of national pride.

Strangely enough, the French, who killed off their monarchy during the French Revolution, seemed obsessed with all pomp and ceremonial preparation for Elizabeth’s II funeral.

The reason I don’t really celebrate Bastille day is because of the widespread cruelty of the Revolutionaries against the French royalty, the clergy, and those who were sympathetic to the French court.

It was during the French Revolution that many churches were destroyed and pilloried.  Thousands of innocents were sent to the  Conciergerie awaiting their turn at the guillotine.

During revolutionary times, appropriately called La Terreur, violence was widespread, mainly fueled by Robespierre, Danton, Hebert, and Jean-Paul Marat, the most prominent revolutionaries.   This was a time of much distrust, where mere suspicions could easily land you in prison.

To avoid lengthy lines, I timed going close to Sunday lunch, knowing the majority of French love long Sunday lunches.   It paid off as the line was only to the corner of the Seine.

The Congiergerie with its corner edifice and magnificent clock occupies a huge part of Ile de la Cité, the side overlooking the Seine.  Across the street is the flower and bird market.

It lies adjacent to the Palais de la Justice and La Sainte Chapelle.  This whole complex of buildings was once the royal palace until the Louvre was built to accommodate French royalty.

The vast Gothic hall with rippling interwoven arches was the first sight the exhausted Queen Marie Antoinette saw, having been dragged from her carriage on a rainy August night in 1793.    She must have been numbed and too weary to feel entirely the brutality that greeted her.

Yanked up the stairs by fierce-looking guards, she stumbled along as best she could on wobbly legs weak with fear.

Even though it was August, chills ran up her spine, shivering under the wet dress that clung to her side, more from fright than the cool dampness of the prison as she was forcefully shoved and rough-handled to her cell.

The candle-lit guard room on the corner of the lower floor led into a dark hallway where other cells were visible.

Surely she must have noticed the hair-cutting room looking frightfully dim except for one lone candle reflected from the sheen of well-worn scissors still entangled with wisps of black hair.

Turning left down some more stairs, she stumbled on the steps barely visible in the darkness and tripped on the hem of her muddied blue dress.

When her eyes adjusted to the blackness, her first sight was the slightly golden hue of the altar cross, in the chapel, near the red glass repository where leftover consecrated communion hosts are kept by a minuscule candle.

Forcefully shoved again through the narrow opening of a thick purple curtain, she was told this is her cell.

Another guard awaited her yanking her wrist as if she was a donkey to be tied to a post.

Her few whimpering cries barely echoed off of the dank cool walls, lit by a bare tiny lantern.

Inside was a bed, chair, and bidet.

As she wrapped her damp coat more tightly across her chest, she heard heavy footsteps rustling the curtains.

The heavy bearded guard left a metal bowl of cold soup topped with a thick slice of brown bread and plunked down a small wooden jug of water.

On October 15, 1793, Marie Antoinette was swiftly judged of high treason and a criminal of the state, with false and trumped-up accusations in Fauquier Tinville’s kangaroo court, and sentenced to die by guillotine the next day.

The most humiliating accusatory lie was that she was incestuous with her young son, the Dauphin.  As the verdict was read, a few hushed gasps could be heard mixed with shouted mockery of her.

Collapsing in disbelief as the sentence was announced, dazed and limp Marie Antoinette was dragged back to her cell.

She had spent  76 days imprisoned in her cell at the Conciergerie before her execution.

A recount of her last few days was provided by her domestic, Rosalie Lamorliere, who had been assigned to her during her imprisonment at the Conciergerie.

With little distraction except for the ever-present guards watching her constantly and having a bowl of bouillon topped with bread shoved in her cell, she looked forward to the kindness of Rosalie.

From the guard’s corner, she occasionally caught a glance of sunlight piercing the window that faced a sparse courtyard for female prisoners.

She occasionally was permitted some time there, but only by herself to prevent any exchange with other female prisoners.

Guards removed her knitting needles, depriving her of knitting, a leisure she enjoyed.

She spent most of her time sitting reading her prayer book and being lost in her thoughts.

Though she looked forward to occasional priests placing the Eucharist on her tongue, she had good reason to distrust any state-assigned clergy sent her way.

Marie, already torn in grief over the death of two of her children within two years and her husband Louis XVI, who has been recently guillotined, often cried for her two remaining children that she had been forcefully separated from, fearful for their future.

Agents would often awaken her in the middle of the night to search her cell and mattress. Rosalie said she never complained, nor spoke of anger towards those who abused her.

She always voiced much gratitude to Rosalie for her care and the soups she would bring her from her own kitchen.

Rosalie said she only cried about her children and kept a portrait of her son Louis Charles the Dauphine and a small tuff of his hair hidden in her corset that she took to the guillotine.

The last soup that Rosalie prepared for her went uneaten the night before her execution, until Rosalie coaxed her along, saying she needed the force to face her fate.

Early on the day of her execution, a young guard ordered her to get dressed.  Marie’s pleading with him to give her some privacy to change her underwear was denied, so she asked Rosalie to help shield her body from his purulent gaze.

She had wanted to wear her black dress as the widow of her husband, King, Louis XVI, but was ordered to wear a white one with a bonnet instead.

After a brief embrace, Marie gifted her with a medallion and thanked her for all the care she had been accorded. Rosalie recounted holding back her tears so as not to disturb her further.

On the way out her last stop was at the shearers’ table to have her long white hair cut short, only slightly visible under her bonnet.

Rosalie’s last glimpse of Marie Antoinette was through a side window seeing her pass by on a cart toward the guillotine, on October 16, 1793.

The young future king Louis XVII, who had been imprisoned in a dark damp cage, since being separated from his mother, died in 1795 at the age of ten from malnutrition and tuberculosis.

Today, biographies and photos of several women who also went through the Conciergerie before meeting the fate of the blade are displayed in the courtyard.

One of whom Robespierre, seen here had even been in her wedding party, Lucette Desmoulins, provided further testimony that acutely depicts the spurious blood lusting Robespierre and his raging hatred towards all who opposed him, including past friends.

One brave woman was Charlotte Corday, who assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, another vicious revolutionary, by penetrating into his home and stabbing him while bathing.

 

If there was any justice handed to the thousands of innocent victims of La Terreur, karma caught up with the majority of these heinous murderers.

Within Robespierre’s own violent bloodthirsty revolutionary circle, his attempt to take over finally had his compatriots turn on him and he was sentenced to die by the guillotine, as were Danton and Hebert, the other main leaders of La Terreur.

Fourquier Tinville, the judge who sentenced over two thousand people to their death, including Marie Antoinette to the guillotine, likewise was sentenced to die the same way.

Violent-bent dictatorship governments who like to dispel dissidents often start to implode within themselves with divisions that in time can betray and cannibalize each other.

For those who wish to buy some sort of mementos, there is a gift shop offering books, glassware, medieval items and these silly Eiffel shaped pasta.