Antoine Barnave - Correspondence With Marie Antoinette

Correspondence With Marie Antoinette

Along with Jérôme Pétion and the Marquis de Latour-Maubourg, Barnave had been sent on behalf of the National Assembly to escort the extravagant berline carriage, with the Royal Family within, from Varennes back to Paris. It was in this setting that Barnave first met Queen Marie Antoinette. Though their initial interactions were marked by Barnave’s shy attempts to avoid eye contact, the queen was soon able to charm the twenty-nine-year-old politician and earn his favor. The two were reported to have been seen conversing intently on several occasions within the carriage, and near the rest stops, on the journey from Varennes. Purportedly, the subject of these conversations included Barnave and the rest of the Feuillants’ fervent belief that a constitutional monarchy was the most viable solution for ending the revolution with a minimum of further bloodshed.

Much evidence indicates that, because her closest friends, including Count von Fersen (who had organized the flight from Paris), were absent, Marie Antoinette was attempting to influence Barnave and his fellow Feuillants as a way to ensure her family’s safety. She may also have dared to hope that it was still possible to reinstate some form of the former monarchy. Barnave was, quite clearly, taken by the Queen’s charm and waited for her to call on him when she was in grave circumstances.

This hour arrived only a few weeks later when, in early July 1791, Marie Antoinette wrote to Barnave the first of a long series of cryptic communications. Referring to him by a code name, Barnave received his letters through an unknown similarly codenamed intermediary. Her instructions were that her letter be read while the intermediary stood by to accept a reply; then he would return both documents to the queen. She herself never wrote any of the letters; instead, she dictated them so as to avoid embarrassing, and possibly incriminating, documentation.

Eventually, the entire series of letters were smuggled out of the Tuileries to Count von Fersen who sent them to his sister in Sweden where they remain today. The letters revealed that Barnave was confident of his influence in the National Assembly, especially in light of the massacre on the Champ de Mars.