Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars

by Elena Maria Vidal

  As Queen, Antoinette’s faith was practical and manifested itself in her extensive charities, including a home for unwed mothers called the Maternity Society. She encouraged her children to make sacrifices on behalf of the poor. She assisted at daily Mass, confessing and receiving Holy Communion on a regular basis, and lived, to all appearances, as a Roman Catholic in good standing. Her regular confessor as a young Queen was a blind priest of renowned holiness, Abbé Maudoux, who heard the last confession of Louis XV. She kept chapels at all of her residences, and made vestments and altar cloths. At the chapel at Petit Trianon over the altar there was a painting of Louis IX and his Queen, Marguerite of Provence going to St. Thibaud of Marly to ask his prayers for offspring. The painting must have had great meaning for Antoinette as she prayed. Antoinette demonstrated her devotion to the Mother of God by offering white silk garments for the statues of the Blessed Virgin and the Child Jesus at the shrine of Notre Dame de Montflière. Since the year was 1778 we can assume that the offering was connected with the birth of the Queen’s first child, Madame Royale. She built a chapel at Saint-Cloud, which the King bought for her as a place to take her tubercular son.

  After the death of her mother and loss of two of her children in the 1780’s, Antoinette became more noticeably devout, growing closer to her pious sister-in-law, Madame Élisabeth. While under house arrest at the Tuileries palace, Antoinette and Élisabeth connived at getting non-juring priests, i.e., those who were faithful to the Pope, into the palace for secret Masses and confessions. It is supposedly the time when a few historians claim she had a romantic rendez-vous with

  Count Axel von Fersen. However, the atmosphere at the Tuileries was more like the catacombs than Dangerous Liaisons.

  Before her death, when her children had been taken from her, her little son abused and her husband executed, the Queen again sought prayer and the sacraments, affirming in writing her loyalty to the Catholic Church. The priest Abbé Magnin who received her last confession in the Conciergerie later publicly affirmed those facts. Lenôtre’s The Last Days of Marie Antoinette includes some revealing first hand accounts, including the testimony of the priest who, in spite of the great risks, was able to say Mass for the Queen before her death. Mademoiselle Fouché was a lady who often saw to the needs of prisoners and it was she who acquired all that was needed for the Mass to be said. Abbé Magnin stated the following:

  The day of the sacred ceremony being agreed upon, the gaoler came to meet us during the night at a particular spot, and took us into the prison. I heard the Queen's confession. Mademoiselle Fouché was prepared to receive her Saviour and the two gendarmes assured me that they also were ready, and earnestly desired to communicate in these fortunate and unexpected circumstances.

  I celebrated Holy Mass and gave the Communion to the Queen, who, as she fortified herself with the Eucharistic bread, received from God the courage to bear uncomplainingly all the torture that awaited her. Mademoiselle Fouché and the two gendarmes were at the same time admitted to the divine banquet. Having undertaken to tell my story in few words, I cannot possibly dwell upon the emotion to which so touching a scene must give rise....5

  In pre-revolutionary France it was for the King and the Queen to give an example in performing charitable works. Louis XVI and Antoinette took this duty seriously and throughout their reign did what they could to help the needy. Louis XVI often visited the poor in their homes and villages, distributing alms from his own purse. During the difficult winter of 1776, the King oversaw the distribution of firewood among the peasants. As mentioned previously, Louis was responsible for many humanitarian reforms. He went incognito to hospitals, prisons, and factories so as to gain first-hand knowledge of the conditions in which his people lived and worked. In harsh winter of 1783-84 he gave three million livres to the poor and other winters as well.6 The King and Queen were patrons of the Maison Philanthropique, a society founded by Louis XVI which helped the aged, blind and widows. The Queen taught her daughter Madame Royale to wait upon peasant children, to sacrifice her Christmas gifts so as to buy fuel and blankets for the destitute, and to bring baskets of food to the sick. Antoinette took her children with her on her charitable visits to foundling hospitals.7 According to Maxime de la Rocheterie:

  Sometimes they went to the Gobelins; and the president of the district coming on one occasion to compliment her, she said, ‘Monsieur you have many destitute but the moments which we spend in relieving them are very precious to us.’ Sometimes she went to the free Maternity Society which she had founded, where she had authorized the Sisters to distribute sixteen hundred livres for food and fuel every month and twelve hundred for blankets and clothing, without counting the baby outfits which were given to three hundred mothers. At other times she went to the School of Design also founded by her to which she sent one day twelve hundred livres saved with great effort that the rewards might not be diminished nor the dear scholars suffer through her own distress. Again she placed in the house of Mademoiselle O’Kennedy four daughters of disabled soldiers, orphans, for whom she said, ‘I made the endowment.’8

  The Queen adopted three poor children to be raised with her own, as well overseeing the upbringing of several needy children, whose education she paid for, while caring for their families. She brought several peasant families to live on her farm at Trianon, building cottages for them. There was food for the hungry distributed every day at Versailles, at the King’s command. During the famine of 1787-88, the royal family sold much of their flatware to buy grain for the people, while they ate the cheap barley bread in order to be able to give more to the hungry. Madame de la Tour du Pin, a lady-in-waiting of Antoinette’s, recorded in her spirited memoirs the daily activities at Versailles, including the rumors and the gossip. Her pen does not spare Louis XVI and Antoinette, which is why the following account is of interest. Every Sunday, Antoinette would personally take up a collection for the poor, which the courtiers resented since they preferred to have the money on hand for gambling. The Queen supported several impoverished families from her own purse. As Madame de la Tour du Pin describes:

  We had to be there before seven, for the Queen entered before the chiming of the clock. Beside her door would be one of the two Curés of Versailles. He would hand her a purse and she would go around to everyone, taking up a collection and saying: ‘For the poor, if you please.’ Each lady had her ‘écu’ of six francs ready in her hand and the men had their ‘louis.’ The Curé would follow the Queen as she collected this small tax for her poor people, a levy which often totaled as much as much as one hundred ‘louis’ and never less than fifty. I often heard some of the younger people, including the most spendthrift, complaining inordinately of this almsgiving being forced upon them, yet they would not have thought twice of hazarding a sum one hundred times as large in a game of chance, a sum much larger than that levied by the Queen.9

  Louis and Antoinette contributed a great deal throughout their reign especially to the care of orphans and foundlings. There is a picture of an occasion in February, 1790, after their removal to Paris, when the King, the Queen and their children toured such a facility, where the nuns cared for abandoned babies and little children. As is reported by Maxime de la Rocheterie, the young Dauphin, soon to be an orphan himself was particularly drawn to the foundlings and gave all of his small savings to aid them.10 The King and Queen did not see helping the poor as anything extraordinary, but as part of being a Christian. The royal couple’s almsgiving stopped only with their incarceration in the Temple in August 1792, for then they had nothing left to give but their lives.

  The hallmark of a Christian is charity which involves the ability to forgive. Whatever faults and flaws Louis and Antoinette may have had, there can be no doubt that they bore wrongs patiently and tried to forgive their enemies. As Louis XVI stated in his Last Will and Testament, written on Christmas Day, 1792, less than a month before he was killed: “I pardon with all my heart those who made themselves my enemies, without my having given them an
y cause, and I pray God to pardon them, as well as those who, through false or misunderstood zeal, did me much harm.”11 The King did not want to be avenged. “I exhort my son, should he have the misfortune of becoming king, to remember he owes himself wholly to the happiness of his fellow citizens; that he should forget all hates and all grudges, particularly those connected with the misfortunes and sorrows which I am experiencing....”12

  Antoinette’s forgiveness has an especially supernatural aura. When the Queen wrote her last letter to her sister-in-law, she was hours away from death. She had been put through the ordeal of a humiliating trial, designed to break her will. Her little son had been dragged from her arms and tormented into accusing his own mother of unnatural crimes. That Antoinette made an effort to forgive those who had tried to destroy her by corrupting her little boy surely was a result of grace. Here are her words: “I beg pardon of all whom I know, and especially of you, my sister, for all the vexations which, without intending it, I may have caused you. I pardon all my enemies the evils that they have done me.”13 Not only does the Queen forgive but she asks forgiveness. Humility and compunction drown any bitterness or recriminations, although certainly in her agony she experienced the full range of emotions. Only a person of sincere and profound faith could make that leap from agony to the heights of martyrdom.

  13 Holidays at Versailles

  “Thank God the endless Carnival is over!” —Empress Maria Theresa

  As previously mentioned, Charlemagne or Charles the Great, King of the Franks, was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III at St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Day in the year 800. It was at that time that Christmas began to be celebrated with greater festivity in Europe, although Epiphany continued to have higher liturgical rank. To the French the triumphant cry of Noël, originating either from the Latin word for birthday (natalis) or the French word for news (nouvelles), became the word for Christmas. Advent is the four week preparation for Christmas, which in earlier times had been longer and as rigorous as Lent. In the eighteenth century, Advent was still a time of fasting and days of abstinence from meat in Catholic countries, although it was punctuated by feast days such as St. Nicholas Day on December 6, the Immaculate Conception on December 8 and other saints’ days depending on the diocese. For Antoinette, it was a time of increasing her charitable works. The Queen made the needs of the indigent a priority, especially in the cold of winter. Antoinette is all too commonly characterized as someone who ignored the plight of the poor. In reality, her charities were quite extensive. She also took great care to instill a love of the needy in her children. At Christmastime, during a particularly brutal winter, the Queen had them renounce their Christmas gifts in order to buy food and blankets for the destitute. As Maxime de La Rocheterie relates:

  One year, on the approach of the 1st of January, she had the most beautiful playthings brought from Paris to Versailles; she showed them to her children, and when they had looked at them and admired them, said to them that they were without doubt very beautiful, but that it was still more beautiful to distribute alms; and the price of these presents was sent to the poor.1

  The Queen’s generosity was well-known by her contemporaries, in spite of her efforts to be discreet, and the efforts of her enemies to portray her as a decadent spendthrift. In the difficult winter of 1788-89, the Seine froze over; the wolves were able to cross into the suberbs of Paris. Food was scarce and people were starving to death. Louis and Antoinette devoted themselves to aiding those in in need. When the Queen heard of special cases of suffering she sent a trusted servant to investigate or went herself, often to the cottages near Versailles, to discover how she could best be of assistance. What good she did, she tried to do in secret. Necker, upon discovering one of her benefactions, begged the Queen to be allowed to make it public. “Be sure, on the contrary,” she replied, “that you never mention it. What good could it do? They would not believe you.”2 However, enough people heard of her charities so that in Paris they spontaneously built monuments of snow in her honor. One bore the profiles of Louis and Antoinette, with verses praising the royal generosity in the time of crisis.

  Reine, dont la beauté surpasse les appas

  Près d'un roi bienfaisant occupé ici la place.

  Si ce monument frêle est de neige et de glace,

  Nos coeurs pour toi ne le sont pas.

  De ce monument sans exemple,

  Couple auguste, l'aspect bien doux pur votre coeur

  Sans doute vous plaira plus qu'un palais, qu'un temple

  Que vous élèverait un peuple adulateur.3

  On Christmas Day at Versailles, after confessing and receiving Holy Communion, the King would touch the sick, even as on the day of his coronation. It was an ancient tradition which fell into disuse during the early part of the reign of Louis XIV because, due to the King’s refusal to forsake his immoral lifestyle, he could not receive Holy Communion. His later years saw his reformation and the renewal of the ceremony on Christmas day and other high holy days. Unfortunately, after the initial pious years of Louis XV’s reign, the tradition ceased for decades, due to the rule of many mistresses. Louis XVI restored the healing ceremony, and on every Christmas day until his imprisonment he could be found praying over his sick subjects, after receiving the Eucharist.4

  On the twelfth day of Christmas came Epiphany or la Fête des Rois, celebrating the visit of the Magi to the Infant Jesus. Every French family, including the Royal Family, celebrated with a galette des rois, or King Cake. The cake was a puff pastry filled with marzipan, and hidden inside was a fève, which meant fava bean, although often it was a small charm of some kind. The member of the family who received the piece of cake with the fève became King or Queen for the day.5 Epiphany also marked the beginning of Carnival, the celebratory season before the penitential season of Lent.

  As a young girl, Antoinette embraced the festivities of Carnival with alacrity, especially the masked balls. Since members of the royal family were constantly surrounded by semi-liturgical ceremonies, at the masked ball the princes and princesses could engage in something vaguely resembling normal human interaction. The wearing of a mask, although it did not always endow total anonymity, lightened the tight protocol so that royals could mingle and converse with others in society. In February of 1773, Antoinette wrote to her mother Empress Maria Theresa, relating how she went with her husband the Dauphin Louis to the Opera ball in Paris:

  We went—M. le Dauphin, the comte, and comtesse de Provence and I—last Thursday to the Opera Ball in Paris; we kept the utmost secret. We were all masked; still, we were recognized after half an hour. The duc de Chartres and the duc de Bourbon, who were dancing at the Palais Royal right next door came to meet us and asked us pressingly to go and dance at Madame de Chartres’; but I excused myself from it as I had the King’s permission for the Opera only. We returned here at seven and heard Mass before going to bed. Everybody is delighted with M. le Dauphin’s willingness to have this outing since he was believed to be averse to it.6

  In January of 1774, Louis and Antoinette once again ventured incognito into Paris to the Opera ball, accompanied by Louis’ two brothers and their wives. Here is Comte de Mercy’s description of the event in a letter to Empress Maria Theresa:

  The three Princes and Princesses came on the 30th of January to the masked ball at the Opera; measures had been so well taken that they remained a long while without being recognized by anyone. M. le Dauphin [Louis] behaved splendidly; he went about the ball talking indiscriminately to all those he met on his path, in a very gay and decorous manner introducing the kind of jests suited to the occasion. The public was enchanted with this conduct on the part of M. le Dauphin, it made a great sensation in Paris and they did not fail, as always happens in these cases, to attribute to Madame la Dauphine the improvement they noticed in her consort’s way of showing himself....

  The Princes and Princesses came back a second time to the Opera ball on Sunday, the 6th of this month [February]; but this ti
me their presence was less well concealed and consequently there was a greater influx of people to the theater. However, nothing improper or embarrassing resulted, and Madame la Dauphine, who did not unmask, drew on herself all the applause and admiration with which all the public always hastens to do homage to her, both owing to the people to whom she spoke and the things she said to them.7

  It was at the Opera ball on January 30 that Antoinette first met Count Axel von Fersen, chatting with him behind her mask, in the presence of her husband and in-laws, but no eyebrows were raised by this playful incident. The Empress Maria Theresa was more concerned with her daughter getting sick from exhaustion, and at the end of the 1773 Carnival wrote: “Thank God it is all over....”8 Later, she expressed reservations about the young Queen's taste in fashion. On March 5, 1775, after Louis XVI had ascended the throne of France, the Empress penned:

  Thank God the endless Carnival is over! That exclamation will make me look very old, but I must admit that all those late evenings were too tiring; I feared for the Court’s health and for the order of it’s usual habits, which is an essential point....In the same way I can't prevent myself raising a point which many gazettes repeat all too often; it is the coiffure you use; they say that from the forehead it is thirty-six inches high, and with so many feathers and ribbons to adorn it!9

  Antoinette responded by saying:

  Although Carnival did amuse me a great deal, I agree that it was time it was ended. We are now back to our usual routine....It is true that I take some care of the way I dress; and, as for feathers, everyone wears them, and it would be extraordinary not to wear them. Their height has been much curtailed since the end of the balls….10