Revolution
The months leading up to the outbreak of the French Revolution in July 1789 saw the queen and the duchesse de Polignac become close again. Politically, Gabrielle and her friends supported the ultra-monarchist movement in Versailles, with Gabrielle becoming increasingly important in royalist intrigues as the summer progressed, usually in partnership with her friend, the comte d'Artois, the king's youngest brother.
The marquis de Bombelles, a diplomat and politician, remembered her ceaseless work to promote hardline responses against the emergent revolution. Together with the baron de Breteuil, Bombelles' godfather and former diplomat, and the comte d'Artois, Gabrielle persuaded Marie-Antoinette to help work against the king's popular minister of finances, Jacques Necker. However, without the necessary military support to crush the insurrection, Necker's dismissal fuelled the already-serious violence in Paris, culminating in the attack on the Bastille fortress.
After the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, all the members of the Polignac family went into exile. On Louis XVI's express orders, the comte d'Artois left, as did Breteuil; Gabrielle went with her family to Switzerland, where she kept in contact with the Queen through letters. After she had left, the care of the royal children was entrusted to the Marquise de Tourzel.
Read more about this topic: Yolande De Polastron
Famous quotes containing the word revolution:
“Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.”
—Ignazio Silone (1900–1978)
“It is as absurd to say that [due to motherhood] all women shall be denied the suffrage, as it would be to deny all men the suffrage, because some are liable, periodically, to inflammatory rheumatism, delirium tremens, or financial failure.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Revolution (February 17, 1870)
“I have seen in this revolution a circular motion of the sovereign power through two usurpers, father and son, to the late King to this his son. For ... it moved from King Charles I to the Long Parliament; from thence to the Rump; from the Rump to Oliver Cromwell; and then back again from Richard Cromwell to the Rump; then to the Long Parliament; and thence to King Charles, where long may it remain.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)