Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars

by Elena Maria Vidal

  1 9 The Diamond Necklace

  “Fatal moment! in which the Queen found herself, in consequence of this highly impolitic step, on trial with a subject, who ought to have been dealt with by the power of the King alone.” —Madame Campan

  On August 15, 1785, the “Affair of the Necklace” broke upon France, just as Louis XVI and Antoinette were about to assist at the Mass of the Assumption, the patronal solemnity of the realm. Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan, who was supposed to offer the Mass, was publicly arrested in his pontifical robes for his part in the debacle. The Diamond Necklace scandal was one of the events which precipitated the French Revolution of 1789 and the fall of the monarchy. After perusing the internet I think it becomes necessary to affirm once again that Antoinette, according to several major biographers, was an innocent victim in one of the most sordid intrigues in history. She never sought to possess the necklace. For one thing, it was not to her liking; she preferred light, aerial creations. A few scholars even doubt that Madame du Barry, whom the jewelers had in mind when they originally designed the huge, garish necklace, called a “Slave’s Collar,” would have cared for it, her taste being not quite so grotesque as is generally assumed. Also, by 1785 Antoinette had cultivated simpler tastes; she was under the influence of Madame de Polignac, who never wore diamonds. It is known that when Boehmer tried to sell her the necklace, she remarked that France needed ships, not diamonds.1

  The fault of the King and Queen was in attempting to be too democratic and open in the handling of the proceedings. Instead of trying to settle the disaster quietly, there was a public trial of the Cardinal, for whom Antoinette harbored resentments; her mother the Empress had called him ce vilain eveque or “that villain bishop.”2 Not only had Cardinal de Rohan rudely infiltrated one of her garden parties, but a letter he had written to one of Louis XV’s ministers was found by Madame du Barry and turned into a joke about Antoinette’s mother. He had many mistresses; he symbolized the worst decadence of the French nobility and the corrupt higher clergy. He was Grand Almoner of Versailles due to his ancestral prerogatives, but neither the King nor the Queen had any use for him. The scandal rid them of him, but at a very high price. They could never have known at the onset the cast of bizarre characters with whom the Cardinal was involved, who were brought into the light of day. The Queen’s name was dragged through the mud by being associated with such people in the gazettes, people who were complete strangers to her. Biographer Maxime de la Rocheterie affirms that even had the King and Queen tried to suppress the scandal, the results would have been disastrous nevertheless.3

  How did it all come about? Through a woman who lied. Each lie told by Madame de la Motte was more outrageous than the last, yet individuals motivated by lust or ambition or greed believed her tales. She told people that she was an intimate friend of the Queen, who had never even heard of her. The swindle was tragic for all involved, especially for the innocent Antoinette, for it confirmed in the popular imagination all the salacious gossip which portrayed her as a loose, extravagant woman.

  Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, later known as the Comtesse de la Motte, was from a destitute family with an alcoholic father who claimed to be descended from an illegitimate son of Henri II, and therefore claimed to be the last of the royal Valois. Jeanne was sent out to beg in the streets at age four and was brutally beaten by her mother when she did not return with enough money. Her father died and her mother eventually abandoned Jeanne and her siblings, who were found begging and stealing to fend off starvation. A noble family took them in, Jeanne was fed and cared for but her personality was already fixed; she was amoral to a sociopathic degree, and a convincing liar. Jeanne married Nicolas de la Motte, from the lower untitled nobility, and soon they were calling themselves “Comte and Comtesse.” She had managed to secure a royal pension based upon her Valois antecedents. She gained another when she visited Versailles and pretended to faint in Madame Élisabeth’s antechamber. But she needed much more money than two pensions to live in the princely style she felt she deserved. Jeanne reached out to Cardinal de Rohan. She told him that she was a confidante of the Queen. The Cardinal believed it, knowing the Queen was fairly democratic with her friendships. He gave Jeanne more money and saw that her husband was given a post as a bodyguard of the Comte d’Artois.

  The Cardinal was infatuated with the Queen, and had tried in a thousand ways to win her attention, even by coming uninvited to one of her fêtes at Trianon, which only infuriated her more. He wanted to belong to her inner circle at Trianon, not understanding that both Louis and Antoinette disliked playboy prelates. His infatuation is the only thing that explains why he was taken in by a woman like Jeanne de la Motte, whose airs of grandeur could not hide her crudeness and lack of education. Knowing about the necklace which Boehmer and Bassange had offered to the Queen but had been refused, she and her lover, the forger and gigolo Rétaux de Villette, began passing notes on to the Cardinal. The forged notes were on gold-edged writing paper and signed “Marie-Antoinette de France” and asked the Cardinal to be the intermediary for her secret purchase of the famous necklace. He agreed, secured the necklace from the jewelers, and gave it to the La Mottes, who broke it up and sold the diamonds.

  Meanwhile, at Versailles months passed since the Queen had told Boehmer that she had no intention of buying the “Slave’s Collar.” Suddenly, the Queen began to receive strange notes from the jeweler, thanking her for her “purchase,” and hinting that her first “payment” was due. She assumed the man had become deranged and discarded the notes without another thought. Then Boehmer began to pester Madame Campan, while the latter was on holiday in the country. Madame Campan persuaded her mistress to receive him. On August 12, 1785, he came to Versailles in a state which bordered on hysteria. He claimed that the Queen had secretly bought the diamond necklace from him, using Cardinal de Rohan, the Grand Almoner of France, as an intermediary. The necklace was delivered to the Cardinal in February, but he, Boehmer, had not yet been paid the first installment, due August 1. As he saw the Queen’s blank expression, and realized she knew nothing of any such transaction, he fell to his knees, sobbing, declaring himself to be ruined.

  It is ironic that the tragedy exploded on the patronal feast day of the kingdom, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was also kept as the feast day of the Queens of France. It is an additional irony that a Cardinal of the Roman Church was instrumental in the culmination of the scandal through his own unworthy and imprudent conduct. Here is Madame Campan’s account of the Cardinal’s arrest:

  On the following Sunday, the 15th of August, being the Assumption, at twelve o’clock, at the very moment when the Cardinal, dressed in his pontifical garments, was about to proceed to the chapel, he was sent for into the King’s closet, where the Queen then was.

  The King said to him, ‘You have purchased diamonds of Boehmer?’

  ‘Yes, Sire.’

  ‘What have you done with them?’

  ‘I thought they had been delivered to the Queen.’

  ‘Who commissioned you?’

  ‘A lady, called the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, who handed me a letter from the Queen; and I thought I was gratifying her Majesty by taking this business on myself.’

  The Queen here interrupted him and said, ‘How, monsieur, could you believe that I should select you, to whom I have not spoken for eight years, to negotiate anything for me, and especially through the mediation of a woman whom I do not even know?’

  ‘I see plainly,’ said the Cardinal, ‘that I have been duped. I will pay for the necklace; my desire to please your Majesty blinded me; I suspected no trick in the affair, and I am sorry for it.’

  He then took out of his pocket-book a letter from the Queen to Madame de Lamotte, giving him this commission. The King took it, and, holding it towards the Cardinal, said:

  ‘This is neither written nor signed by the Queen. How could a Prince of the House of Rohan, and a Grand Almoner of France, ever think that the Queen would sign Mari
e Antoinette de France? Everybody knows that queens sign only by their baptismal names. But, monsieur,’ pursued the King, handing him a copy of his letter to Boehmer, ‘have you ever written such a letter as this?’

  Having glanced over it, the Cardinal said, ‘I do not remember having written it.’

  ‘But what if the original, signed by yourself, were shown to you?’

  ‘If the letter be signed by myself it is genuine.’

  He was extremely confused, and repeated several times, ‘I have been deceived, Sire; I will pay for the necklace. I ask pardon of your Majesties.’

  ‘Then explain to me,’ resumed the King, ‘the whole of this enigma. I do not wish to find you guilty; I had rather you would justify yourself. Account for all the manoeuvres with Boehmer, these assurances and these letters.’

  The Cardinal then, turning pale, and leaning against the table, said, ‘Sire, I am too much confused to answer your Majesty in a way—’

  ‘Compose yourself, Cardinal, and go into my cabinet; you will there find paper, pens, and ink,–write what you have to say to me.’

  The Cardinal went into the King’s cabinet, and returned a quarter of an hour afterwards with a document as confused as his verbal answers had been. The King then said, ‘Withdraw, monsieur.’ The Cardinal left the King’s chamber, with the Baron de Breteuil, who gave him in custody to a lieutenant of the Body Guard, with orders to take him to his apartment. M. d’Agoult, aide-major of the Body Guard, afterwards took him into custody, and conducted him to his hotel, and thence to the Bastille....

  The moment the Cardinal’s arrest was known a universal clamour arose. Every memorial that appeared during the trial increased the outcry. On this occasion the clergy took that course which a little wisdom and the least knowledge of the spirit of such a body ought to have foreseen. The Rohans and the House of Condé, as well as the clergy, made their complaints heard everywhere. The King consented to having a legal judgment, and early in September he addressed letters-patent to the Parliament, in which he said that he was ‘filled with the most just indignation on seeing the means which, by the confession of his Eminence the Cardinal, had been employed in order to inculpate his most dear spouse and companion.’

  Fatal moment! in which the Queen found herself, in consequence of this highly impolitic step, on trial with a subject, who ought to have been dealt with by the power of the King alone. The Princes and Princesses of the House of Condé, and of the Houses of Rohan, Soubise, and Guemenée, put on mourning, and were seen ranged in the way of the members of the Grand Chamber to salute them as they proceeded to the palace, on the days of the Cardinal’s trial; and Princes of the blood openly canvassed against the Queen of France.4

  In the months that followed, the squalid affair was brought to public trial. The Queen desired everything to be as open as possible, but the Parisian lawyers were delighted that the case proved to doubly besmirch the Church and the Crown. As the story unraveled, it came to light that the Cardinal had often consulted a Sicilian alchemist named Joseph Balsamo, who styled himself the “Comte de Cagliostro,” a dabbler in the occult. Cagliostro claimed not only to be two thousand years old, but to possess prescience of future events. He had even conjured up a vision of the Queen in a carafe for the benefit of the Cardinal. The motto of Cagliostro was Lilia pedibus destrue, “Tread underfoot the Lilies.” The implications of Cagliostro’s involvement horrified the King and Queen, as much as did the Cardinal’s story about a nocturnal rendezvous with the Queen in the palace gardens. Most people believed the tale about his encounter with a lady in white, who handed him a rose, since it was common knowledge that Her Majesty loved to take walks in the moonlight. However, the Cardinal had been duped again. The LaMotte woman had paid a streetwalker to impersonate the Queen, attired in a white dress and veiled hat.

  In the end, the Cardinal was acquitted of all guilt, and was allowed to go free. He was hailed as a hero by the French people for escaping the clutches of the evil, lustful L’Auchrichienne. When Louis refused to have the man back at Versailles, he was accused of tyranny. Meanwhile, Antoinette’s reputation was soiled beyond repair. Many thought the Cardinal was her lover, and that she had used him to procure the necklace for her, afterwards abandoning him to his fate. The La Motte woman, after being publicly branded as a thief, escaped from jail to England, where she wrote and published a “memoir” about the Queen’s “private life.” It was the manuscript of the “memoirs” that the Polignacs had gone to England to buy, but Monsieur de la Motte had it published anyway. Louis tried to buy up every copy, but one copy came into the wrong hands, and was republished. The book was a sensational best seller. Antoinette’s good name was destroyed. She was hissed at the Opera, and compared to every wicked and wanton queen who had ever lived, including Jezebel and Messalina. In 1791, Jeanne fell, or was pushed, from an upstairs window in London and died, two years before the Queen herself was killed.

  In spite of Cardinal de Rohan’s acquittal, the King banished him to the Benedictine monastery at Chaise-Dieu. The Cardinal was elected to the Estates-General and sat in the National Assembly in 1789. However, after the 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed, Rohan refused to take the oath denying the papal supremacy and left France for Germany. He opened his house at Ettenheim to faithful Catholics and non-juring priests displaced by the Revolution. He embraced a life of penance and gave all of his money to helping the poor. He died in 1803 in the odor of sanctity.5 The Rohan family was paying off the debt of the stolen necklace until the 1890’s.6

  20 The Revolution

  “I saw everything, knew everything, and have forgotten everything.” —Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France

  Of Louis XVI, Nesta Webster writes: “As Soulavie says again, under former kings the monarch was the idol of the nation, under Louis XVI, on the contrary, the nation was the object almost of adoration of the King.”1 She discusses the painting by Hersent of “Louis XVI relieving the Afflicted” of which an eye-witness later said that art completely imitated reality in that case: Louis did indeed go among the peasants distributing alms, including firewood.2 The many reforms of Louis XVI began in 1774 at the beginning of his reign, including the abolition of torture, civil rights for Jews and Protestants, the abolition of servitude and lettres de cachet, and many more. By July of 1789, with the problems with the Estates-General and the death of his oldest son, he was essentially having a nervous breakdown. Indeed, the King had a series of physical and mental collapses in the last turbulent years of his life; it is amazing he was able to function at all. Beginning in 1787, he contracted a painful case of the skin disease erysipelas. He began drinking heavily as well. He was known at times to have crying jags, which some historians try to attribute to Louis possibly “discovering” his wife’s “affair” with Fersen, but Louis had much graver issues to worry about. Indeed, Antoinette became his strength, and therefore more than ever became the target of the pamphleteers and of those who wanted control of the throne. Louis XVI did not want to leave his people in the hands of extremists and the Queen, of course, would not leave his side. “I will die at his feet” she was heard to say repeatedly, when it was suggested that she try to escape on her own during the Revolution’s dark days.3

  On several occasions, when attacked by the mob, it had been the hope of the revolutionary leaders, especially the Duc d’Orléans, that the royal couple would either flee or be killed. The fact that Louis and Antoinette were able to ride the tide of total upheaval for four years can be attributed to their courage, which gained the respect even of those intent upon tearing them to pieces. The King and especially the Queen had the gift of turning enemies, such as Mirabeau, Barnave, and Toulan, into friends. As the revolutionary leader Barnave found, according to Beaulieu, “the Queen treated him with that affectionate politeness which had led her to being given the title of ‘Mary, full of grace (Marie, pleine de graces).’”4 The blunders of the far right, that is, the émigrés abroad, led to the destruction of Louis, Antoinette and th
eir family as much as did the malice of their enemies on the left. Nevertheless, the King, Queen and Madame Élisabeth were distinguished for their profound courtesy, kindness and forgiveness, even in the most desperate situations. Their trials forged Louis and Antoinette into one. At the beginning of their imprisonment in the Temple in August 1792, the Queen shed tears, saying to her husband: