Versailles: The chasing of Marie Antoinette at Oeil de Boeuf

While touring the King’s and Queen’s bed chamber at Versailles, Marie Antoinette occupied my mind; she is the most unfairly vilified woman in history.

Oeil de Boeuf

There is a short hallway called “Oeil de Boeuf” (bull-eye) as there are windows looking like “bull-eye” in it, connecting the King’s and Queen’s bed chambers.  One will come across “Oeil de Boeuf” reading Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, at least 50 or 60 references.

Through this small back door Marie Antoinette escaped

The fateful day was October 5 of 1789. Women in the market place were protesting the high price and shortage of bread; they quickly became a rioting mob, tens of thousands, gathering all the weapons they could lay their hands, marching to Versailles; as one historian said “the female insurrectionary force resembles the English Naval one.”

They broke through the guards, killing two of them, chasing Queen Marie Antoinette through Oeil de Boeuf to King’s bed chamber.  One photo shows the small back door, through which she ran to the Oeil de Boeuf.  Next day they were forced to move to Paris, never returned.

Oeil de Boeuf

The chasing at Oeil de Boeuf is as important an event as the storming of Bastille (7/14/1789) although less well known.  These events marked the turning points for violence in the unpredictable and uncontrollable revolution process.

While in Oeil de Boeuf, seeing the “bull eye” window, Janice and I quickly realized where we were; we thus fired up our imagination, seeing how the queen ran for her life; hearing the clamorous shouting of the mob—the market women; we have “seen” and “heard” more than the other tourists had.

After visiting Notre Dame, we went to Sainte Chapelle nearby; we actually entered it through Palais de Justice, where most of the trials, including that of the King and Queen, took place here during the Revolution.  Marie Antoinette was taken to Conciergie (inside Palais de Justice) as a prisoner on 8/1/1793.  We didn’t go inside to see it; saving some spots for the next trip.  Her execution (10/16/1793, almost nine months after the King’s) took place at Place de la Concorde, where we visited and mourned in the morning of September 27.

The above photo is the plaque saying Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s public executions took place at Place de la Revolution, now called Place de la Concorde, where is one end of Champs-Elysees Avenue, the other end is Arc de Triomphe, between which the victory parades after WWI and WWII took place.

You may be interested in reading what Thomas Carlyle wrote about the chasing in Oeil de Boeuf in his French Revolution, written in 1837, forty some years after the event.

The following is what Thomas Carlyle wrote in his French Revolution, “Trembling maids of Honour, . . . hastily wrap the Queen; not in robes of state.  She flies for her life, across the Oeil de Boeuf; against the main door of which too Insurrection batters.  She is in the King’s Apartment, in the King’s arms; she clasps her children amid a faithful few.  The Imperial-hearted bursts into mother’s tears. “O my friends, save me and my children!”  The battering of Insurrectionary axes clangs audible across the Oeil-de-Boeuf.  What an hour!

Queen's bed chamber

King's bed chamber