An account of the October Days, from the first part of the narrative of Marie-Therese, Duchesse d’Angoulême.

… the iron gates of the château were forced and the vagabonds, led, it was said, by the Duc d’Orléans himself, rushed straight to my mother’s apartment. The Swiss Guard stationed at the foot of the staircase, which could have disputed their passage, gave way, so that the villains, without any hindrance, entered the hall of the Gardes du Corps wounding and killing those who tried to oppose their passage. Two of these guards, named Miomandre de Sainte-Marie and Durepaire, though grievously wounded, dragged themselves to my mother’s door, crying out to her to fly and bolt the doors behind her. Their zeal was cruelly rewarded; the wretches flung themselves upon them and left them bathed in their blood, for dead.

Meantime, my mother’s women, wakened by the shouts of the insurgents and the Gardes du Corps, rushed to the door and bolted it. My mother sprang from her bed and, half-dressed, ran to my father’s apartment; but the door of it was locked within, and those who were there, hearing the noise, would not open it, thinking it was the rioters trying to enter. Fortunately, a man on duty named Turgy (the same who afterwards served us in the Temple as waiter), having recognized my mother’s voice, opened the door to her immediately.

At the same moment the wretches forced the door of my mother’s room; so that one instant later she would have been taken without means of escape. As soon as she entered my father’s rooms she looked for him, but could not find him; having heard she was in danger he had rushed to her apartment, but by another way. Fortunately, he met my brother, brought to him by Mme. de Tourzel, who urged him to return to his own rooms, where he found my mother awaiting him in mortal anxiety.

Reassured about my father and brother, the queen came in search of me; I was already awakened by the noise in her rooms and in the garden under my windows; my mother told me to rise, and then took me with her to my father’s apartment…

image: Massacre of the garde du corps protecting the apartment of the queen; source: gallica.bnf.fr