Chapters 28 and 29 Summary and Analysis

The chance that they might be saved by a foreign invasion that would suppress the revolutionaries sustained Louis and Antoinette in 1792, and they were heartened to learn that Austrian forces had started to gather on the French border. This was an outrage to the French people, of course, given Antoinette's Austrian heritage. The National Assembly vowed to go to war with Austria if they did not back down. Meanwhile, Austria forged an alliance with Prussia, which was even more eager to invade France.

In Paris, the revolutionary fervor was ever rising and peaked with an invasion of the Tuileries, when a mob reached the king and queen themselves, making threatening moves and hurling insults at them, but not harming them. After this incident, Antoinette took to wearing a specially-made thick undergarment meant to withstand the points of daggers or...