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Updated: June 7, 2025
"The felicity of the Queen was too great not to be soon overcast. The unbounded influence of the De Polignacs was now at its zenith. It could not fail of being attacked. Every engine of malice, envy, and detraction was let loose; and, in the vilest calumnies against the character of the Duchess, her royal mistress was included.
Thus the Polignacs were not settled at Court in any degree of splendour which could justify complaints from others, and the substantial favours bestowed upon that family were less envied than the intimacy between them and their proteges and the Queen. Those who had no hope of entering the circle of the Comtesse Jules were made jealous by the opportunities of advancement it afforded.
As for the actual conspirators, twenty of them were sentenced to death on June 10th, among them being the elder of the two Polignacs, the Marquis de Rivière, and Georges Cadoudal. Urgent efforts were made on behalf of the nobles by Josephine and "Madame Mère"; and Napoleon grudgingly commuted their sentence to imprisonment.
The titled riffraff that had adorned the Louis XV-du Barry court was swept out on the accession of the young Queen, but only to be replaced by a new clique as greedy as the old, and not vastly more edifying. Richelieu and d'Aiguillon only made way for Lauzun, the Polignacs, and Vaudreuil.
The Court was still more deeply affected on witnessing the generous fraternal struggle which took place during the last sitting between the two De Polignacs.
"As yet, however, nothing in particular had discovered that splendour for which the De Polignacs were afterwards so conspicuous.
"Necker himself ascribed his dismission to the influence of the De Polignacs; but he was totally mistaken, for the Duchesse de Polignac was the last person to have had any influence in matters of State, whatever might have been the case with those who surrounded her.
As for the actual conspirators, twenty of them were sentenced to death on June 10th, among them being the elder of the two Polignacs, the Marquis de Rivière, and Georges Cadoudal. Urgent efforts were made on behalf of the nobles by Josephine and "Madame Mère"; and Napoleon grudgingly commuted their sentence to imprisonment.
Together with the proclamation of Schwartzenberg, they circulated one of Monsieur, and another of Louis XVIII. himself; and some of the leading gentlemen of the party, the Montmorencys, the Noailles, the Rohans, the Rochefoucalds, the Polignacs, the Chateaubriands, were early on horseback in the streets; which they paraded without interruption from any, either of the civil authorities, or of the National Guard, decorated with the symbols of their cause, and appealing with eloquence to the feelings of the onlookers.
Marie Antoinette herself felt it, and had the courage to express it. Her friends the Polignacs must be sent away.
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