I had just won a war in a back alley for the life of my son, only to return to the palace and find out I was losing a revolution in a tennis court for the soul of my country.
The words from the page boy hit me with the force of a physical blow. The National Assembly. An oath. My mind, still buzzing with the adrenaline of the sword fight, struggled to catch up.
"What do you mean, 'locked out'?" I demanded, my voice sharp.
"The doors to the assembly hall, Your Majesty," the boy stammered. "They were locked this morning. A sign was posted. 'Closed for Royal Repairs.'"
My enemies. While I was distracted by the attack on my son, my brother Provence and his cronies had made their move. They hadn't used a dagger or a vial of poison this time. They had used a key. A simple, petty, bureaucratic act of war.
"Where are they now?" Marie asked, her hand tightening on my good arm.
"The indoor tennis court, Your Majesty," the page said, his eyes wide with the momentous news. "They refused to go home. They swore an oath. To not stop meeting until they have written a constitution for France."
I felt a surge of furious frustration. I had taken my eye off the ball for a single day to save my son, and the jackals had immediately pounced. They had tried to dismiss the Third Estate like a group of naughty schoolchildren.
And in doing so, they had just turned them into an army.
"Summon the council," I snarled. "And get a physician for my arm."
The council chamber was a scene of smug triumph. My conservative ministers, and my brother Provence, were practically preening. To them, the "Tennis Court Oath" was a childish tantrum. An act of illegal defiance that gave them the perfect excuse to bring down the hammer.
"This is open rebellion!" the Secretary of War declared, his face flushed with excitement. "Your Majesty must call in the army. Surround the tennis court. Arrest them all for treason!"
"And who do we arrest, precisely?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet. "Six hundred men? The chosen representatives of twenty-five million people?"
"It would be a message!"
"It would be a massacre," I shot back. "And it would be the end of the monarchy."
Provence stepped forward, his face a mask of sorrowful reason. "Brother, they have left you no choice. They have declared themselves the new government of France. You cannot allow this to stand."
He was right. I couldn't. But not for the reason he thought.
I looked at their smug, self-satisfied faces. They thought they had me trapped. They thought they had finally forced me into a position where my only option was to become the bloody tyrant they all secretly wanted me to be.
They had just handed me the perfect excuse.
"You are right, brother," I said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across my face. "They have left me no choice."
I turned and walked out of the room, leaving them all gaping in stunned silence. Marie was waiting for me in the hallway. She looked at my face and she knew.
"You are not calling the army, are you?" she whispered.
"No," I said, my voice filled with a cold, hard resolve. "I'm not. I'm going to the tennis court myself."
My ministers and my brother caught up with me as I strode through the palace halls. They were begging, pleading, arguing.
"This is madness!" Provence hissed, grabbing my arm. "You are walking into the lion's den! They will tear you apart!"
I shook him off without breaking my stride. "I am the King of France," I said, my voice ringing in the long corridor. "They are not lions. They are my people. And they have been locked out of their own house."
I didn't take the golden carriage. I didn't summon the Swiss Guard.
I walked.
I ordered my ten loyal guards, De La Tour's men, to escort me, but I gave them a single, clear command: "Sheathe your swords."
Then, Marie did something that stunned the entire court into silence. She took my hand. Not a delicate, formal touch. She laced her fingers through mine, a grip of unshakable solidarity.
And together, the King and Queen of France, with a small, unarmed escort, walked out of the main palace, through the manicured gardens, towards the revolution.
It was an act of such insane, unprecedented theater that no one knew how to react. Courtiers who had been plotting against me just hours before simply stared, their mouths open, as we passed.
The indoor tennis court was a huge, barn-like building with high, dusty windows. As we approached, we could hear the sound of hundreds of voices, a low, angry roar.
When we entered, the roar died. A wave of shocked silence washed over the room. The six hundred delegates of the self-declared National Assembly stared at us, their faces a mixture of astonishment, suspicion, and fear.
They saw their King. Not with an army at his back, but with his Queen at his side. Not a tyrant come to crush them, but a leader who had come to join them.
Bailly, their president, stood on a makeshift podium—an overturned table. His face was pale, but his expression was resolute. In the crowd, I saw Robespierre. His arms were crossed, his expression intense, unreadable. He was watching. Judging.
I let go of Marie's hand and walked alone to the center of the vast, echoing room. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and fear and history. The fate of France, the fate of my family, my own life—it all hung in the balance in this dusty, echoing room.
"I was told I would find the representatives of the French nation here," I said, my voice clear and strong, echoing in the sudden silence. "I see I was not misinformed."
I looked around at the stunned faces. Farmers, lawyers, merchants, priests. The real France. "I was also told that the doors to your assembly hall were locked this morning." I let my voice fill with a cold anger. "That act was done without my knowledge, and without my consent. It was an act of cowardice, by men who fear the future you are trying to build."
I turned to Bailly. "Mr. President," I said, formally acknowledging his new title, "your assembly is the true voice of my people. It is therefore the true will of the King."
This was it. The point of no return. The end of a thousand years of history. The end of absolute monarchy in France. And I was the one pulling the trigger.
I was no longer a king by divine right. I was a king by the consent of the governed.
I officially declared that all three estates would now meet as one. The National Assembly was the new, legitimate government of France. I invited them to return to the Hall of Mirrors, not as my subjects, but as my partners.
For a moment, there was only stunned silence. Then, the room exploded.
It was a roar of pure, unadulterated joy. A wave of relief and disbelief and triumph. Men were weeping. They were embracing. They threw their hats in the air.
They surged forward, not in anger, but in celebration. They lifted Bailly onto their shoulders, parading him around the room. They weren't shouting for a republic, or for the end of the monarchy. They were shouting two phrases, over and over, until the very walls seemed to shake.
"Vive le Roi! Vive la Nation!"
Long live the King! Long live the Nation!
Marie came to stand beside me, her eyes shining with tears. We stood together in the center of the storm, a flicker of hope, bright and fragile, in our hearts.
A young delegate, a fiery journalist named Camille Desmoulins whose name I vaguely recognized, jumped onto a bench. He tore a green leaf from a vine growing on the wall and stuck it in his hat. "A new color for a new France!" he cried. "The color of hope!" Others immediately began to copy him, a sea of green cockades blooming in the crowd.
I did it. I actually, unbelievably, did it. I had steered the ship of state directly into the heart of the hurricane and somehow, somehow, come out the other side. A constitutional monarchy. A peaceful revolution.
Maybe, I thought, a wild, dangerous hope taking root in my heart. Maybe this time, the story can have a different ending.
As the cheering delegates began to file out of the tennis court, heading back to the main palace to begin their work, a grim-faced Captain De La Tour pushed his way through the joyful crowd to my side. The look on his face instantly extinguished my fragile hope.
"Your Majesty," he said, his voice a low, urgent whisper that cut through the celebration. "A message from our spies in Paris. It's urgent."
My stomach clenched. "What is it?"
The Captain leaned in close, his voice barely audible over the cheers. "The royal troops garrisoned on the edge of the city... the ones commanded by the old guard nobles, loyal to your brother's faction... they are not standing down."
He paused, and the look in his eyes was one of pure dread.
"They have been issued live ammunition. And they have just begun their march on Versailles."