From Royal Dignity to Republican Austerity: The Ritual for the Reception of Louis XVI in the French National Assembly (1789-1792)

Abstract

these who have revived the rights of man never free their course of liberty and philosophy from the shackles of a ceremony that mocks their austere souls? Will they be forever stained with this courtly rust that hinders the free flight of thought? Thus wondered Camille Desmoulins in connection with the ritual of the king's arrival at the National Assembly in September 1791, when the new constitution was to be accepted.' At noon on September 14, Desmoulins, seated in the galleries, had seen in action what he called legislators turned interior decorators: sweated blood and water to prepare the throne on which the buttocks of the nation's clerk were to rest, under the very noses and in the presence of the representatives of the sovereign people. Some of them carried the secretaries' desk down before the bar in order to allow this object of idolatry more space in which to gesticulate at his pleasure. Others substituted for the table of the president of the Assembly arnchairs of purple velvet covered with golden fleurs-de-lis. They then draped the stairs leading to these two arnchairs with a carpet of the same material, also covered with fleurs-de-lis. The king's arnchair was placed where the president's normally would be, while the president's was set off to its right so that it touched the king's. In short, our clever and gallant constitutional decorators neglected nothing in order to receive his royal Highness, King of France, in a manner worthy of his dignity. What Desmoulins found so revolting was not the presence of a king in the midst of the deputies of the people, for in September of 1791 one could not reveal one's sentiments directly. (For example, Les Re'volutions de France et de Brabant, like most republican newspapers after Varennes, was at that time singing the praises of the constitutional monarchy.) What bothered Desmoulins was rather a protocol which, according to him, insulted the dignity of the deputies of the National Assembly. us recognize the constitutional king, continued Desmoulins, but let us retain an appropriate attitude. Let us show this citizen king that we are by no means his subjects, that we do not belong