Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars

by Elena Maria Vidal

  Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, had a great deal to do with the Emperor and Empress, her nephew and her daughter, taking in the daughter of Antoinette. Maria Carolina would have welcomed her in Naples but Francis II wanted Marie-Thérèse to marry his brother Archduke Karl von Habsburg. Some gazettes were even announcing an engagement between them although when Madame de Tourzel and Madame de Mackau visited the princess she said she only had feelings for her cousin Louis-Antoine, the Duc d’Angoulême. Her uncle the Comte de Provence, now Louis XVIII, was afraid she was going to marry Karl. According to Louis XVIII, Louis and Antoinette had originally wanted Marie-Thérèse to marry Artois’ oldest son Louis-Antoine but when they had sons they lost interest in such a marriage. But now that their sons were gone he had no doubt that they would have returned to their original intention. On her journey to Austria, Marie-Thérèse was welcomed along the way by her Saxon relatives and by her mother’s sister the Abbess, Archduchess Elisabeth, the one once intended as the bride of Louis XV.11

  In the meantime, Marie-Thérèse received loving letters from Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire, as well as from her cousin Charles-Ferdinand, Duc de Berry, all of whom she rejoiced to hear from. It seems that Marie-Thérèse was not a pauper, for not only were there Antoinette’s diamonds which had been smuggled out of France, but money that Louis XVI had given to Mercy to keep for emergencies, as well as Antoinette’s dowry which had never been paid in full by Austria. Marie-Thérèse displayed that she had inherited her parents’ great facility for languages, for she was speaking fluent German after two months in Austria.12 Her relations with Emperor Francis and his Empress, Maria Theresa of Naples, were cordial but cool; she became good friends with their daughters, Archduchess Marie Louise, who would marry Bonaparte, Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, the future Empress of Brazil. In the meantime, the Mesdames wrote to her again from Rome, telling her there had been a miracle before a statue of the Virgin, in which a dried, dead lily burst into bloom, which the aged princesses took as a sign that France had not been abandoned by God.13 Louis XVI’s other sister, Madame Clothilde, Queen of Sardinia, also corresponded with her orphaned niece, in whom she most certainly found a kindred spirit. But Francis II changed his mind about Madame Royale’s marriage with Karl, since Bonaparte was growing more powerful and alliances with powerful rulers were needed. Some said the princess had become attached to the warrior Archduke and that her heart was broken, leading to an ongoing moroseness and depression in her character. Archduke Karl retired from active duty in 1812 and in 1815 married Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg by whom he had five children. Marie-Thérèse also received a letter from Count von Fersen, asking for a payback for Madame de Korff and her mother, who had given their money for the aborted escape attempt in June of 1791.14 It was a cold letter, and extremely business-like. Marie-Thérèse paid the Korffs.

  In 1799, Madame Royale left Vienna, and was conducted by several faithful retainers to Mitau in Courland in the Russian Empire, where Tsar Paul and Empress Maria had invited her and all the Bourbons to seek asylum. There she married her cousin Louis-Antoine, the son of the Comte d’Artois. At the ceremony she was given the wedding ring of her father, Louis XVI, which she wore until her own death. Here is a description which Louis XVIII wrote in 1799 of his niece to his brother Artois, calling her “our daughter” and comparing her to their sister Madame Élisabeth:

  The portraits you have seen of our daughter…cannot give you an accurate idea of her; they are not in the least like her. She so closely resembles both her father and her mother that she recalls them absolutely, together or separately, according to the point of view from which one looks at her. She is not pretty at first sight; but she becomes so as one looks at her, and especially as one talks to her, for there is not a movement of her face that is not pleasing. She is a little shorter than her mother, and a little taller than our poor sister. She is well made, holds herself well, carries her head perfectly, and walks with ease and grace. When she speaks of her misfortunes her tears do not flow readily, owing to her habit of restraining them, lest her [jailers] should have the barbarous pleasure of seeing her shed them. It is no easy task, however, for her listeners to restrain theirs. But her natural gaiety is not quenched; draw her mind away from this tragic chapter of her life, and she laughs heartily and is quite charming. She is gentle, good-humoured, and affectionate; and there is no doubt that she has the mind of a mature woman. In private with me she behaves as our poor Élisabeth might have behaved with my father; in public she has the bearing of a princess accustomed to holding a Court. She not only says courteous things to everyone, but she says to each individual the most suitable thing that could be said. She is modest without being shy, at her ease without being familiar, and as innocent as on the day she was born. Of that I have been absolutely convinced by her manner with my nephew since Tuesday, the day of her arrival here. In fact, to put it briefly, I recognise in her the angel we have lost.15

  When restored to France and the Tuileries in 1814, Marie-Thérèse was hailed as both the “Orphan of the Temple” and the “French Antigone” for her fidelity to her uncle Louis XVIII. She wanted everything to be exactly as it was when she had last been there with her family, which was of course, impossible. She was subject to nightmares and hysterical episodes when something would by chance remind her of her family's ordeal. Sometimes she would be heard pacing all night. She was known for her charitable activites, preferring hospitals and orphanages to the ballroom and the opera box. However, due to propaganda and the often dour expression she wore in public, by 1830 she was called Madame Rancune or “Lady Resentment.” She was haunted by the fate of her brother and never completely certain that he had died in 1795. She never had any children but loved her niece and nephew, Louise d’Artois and Henri, Comte de Chambord, as her own. She did a lot to rebuild France after all the country had been through with the Revolution and Napoleonic wars. Marie-Thérèse lacked her mother’s grace but carried herself with dignity and pride. She usually wore worn, mended dresses but on formal occasions, such as when she went to the opera, she arrayed herself in satins and velvets, covered with Antoinette’s diamonds. She could be glamorous when she chose to be, emanating majesty as well as sorrow.

  For many years scholars debated as to whether or not the marriage of the Duc and Duchesse d'Angoulême was consummated. From the fact that the matter was ever in doubt, we can guess that perhaps the marriage was not all it should have been. There were rumors that her husband was homosexual while others whispered that he was troubled by impotence.16 According to the research of Dr. Susan Nagel, author of the most recent biography of Marie-Thérèse, the marriage was indeed consummated at some point and in 1813 the princess was pregnant for several months, although she had a miscarriage.17 In 1820, at age forty-two, she thought she was pregnant but it turned out to be symptoms of menopause.18

  Louis-Antoine loved the military; he actually distinguished himself as a soldier and even as a commander on several occasions. It was his courage that won Bordeaux to the side of the Bourbons in 1814. He was known to be a very devout and kindly man to those of his household, as was his wife, although they both had tempers and quarrelled with each other. He was closer to his uncle Louis XVIII than he was to his father Charles X (Artois). However, he and his father made the terrible blunders which led to the final collapse of the Bourbons and the rise of the House of Orléans to the throne in 1830, as is described in the novel Madame Royale. Louis-Antoine is often known as Louis XIX because he was king for about ten minutes after his father abdicated; then he himself signed the abdication as well. His wife, Marie-Thérèse, stayed with him to the end of his life (1844); they had become tender companions and best friends over the years in spite of many troubles, or perhaps because of them. Marie-Thérèse died at her estate at Frohsdorf in Austria in 1851, in the arms of her nephew Henri d’Artois, Comte de Chambord, the son of the Duc de Berry and his wife Caroline of Naples. As she died, Marie-Thérèse kissed the wedding ring of her father, wh
ich had engraved inside it the letters: “M.A.A.A” for “Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria.”

  25 Legacy

  “You must have seen, on some fine summer’s day, a black cloud suddenly appear and threaten to pour down upon the country and lay it waste. The lightest wind drives it away, and the blue sky and serene weather are restored. This is just the image of what has happened to me….” —Marie-Antoinette to Madame Campan

  On January 21, 1815, under a tent on the Rue d’Anjou, eventual site of the expiatory chapel, the coffins of Louis and Antoinette reposed in state. After twenty-two years the former sovereigns were finally to receive Christian burial. The remains of the King and the Queen were carried by the Scottish company of the bodyguards, followed by rank upon rank of soldiers. Some members of the Royal Family were present, although the grieving Duchess d’Angoulême remained closeted in her private oratory at the Tuileries. The funeral procession wound across Paris to the Basilica of Saint Denis, where the requiem Mass was offered. Louis and Antoinette were then interred in the royal crypt; the Office of the Dead was recited. It was the same crypt which had been hideously rifled by the Revolutionaries in 1793, when

  the tombs of the kings and queens of France and their families were opened and the bodies thrown in pits, including that of the seven-year-old Dauphin Louis-

  Joseph.

  Between 1816 and 1826, at the expense of Louis XVIII and the Duchess of Angoulême, the Chapelle Expiatoire was built on the place where the bodies of Louis and Antoinette had been buried after their murders. It was originally called the Madeleine cemetery because it was connected to the Madeleine church. When Louis and Antoinette were executed, they were obscurely buried there with many other victims. However, a Monsieur Descloseaux marked the exact spot where they were each buried. Descloseaux watched over the graves of the King and Queen for many years, going so far as to buy the property and plant an orchard and a garden there. Once a year a bouquet of the flowers from the graves of her parents was picked and sent to Marie-Thérèse in her exile. Although the bodies of the King and Queen were identified and reburied in Saint Denis, as has been described, the Chapelle Expiatoire marked the spot where they had lain for so long. The chapel is considered a model of late Neoclassicism. The statues of the monarchs are particularly unique. Marie-Antoinette is shown “supported by religion” while Louis XVI is portrayed as being “called to immortality.”

  Over the crypt where their tombs now lie are two magnificent statues of Louis and Antoinette, kneeling side by side in prayer at the Basilica of Saint Denis. Catherine Delors describes the statue of the Queen and how it reflects the transformation of Antoinette’s relationship with Louis XVI. To quote:

  Here... she is pensive, humble, leaning forward and sideways towards her husband. This is very moving in light of the evolution of the royal couple's complex relationship: mutual coldness at first, then disdain on her part, gradually followed by ever increasing closeness, respect and affection. During their last months together at the Temple, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette cared for each other in the deepest sense of the word. She was devastated by his death, and his last earthly concerns were for her and their children. I believe this sculpture beautifully captures this. There was definitely more than propaganda to the Saint-Denis reburials.1

  After reviewing the life of Antoinette, with the heights of splendor and the depths of misery which characterize it, I must turn to the unpleasant subject of “Let them eat cake.” That phrase, never spoken by any Queen of France, is the only thing the general public knows about our Antoinette. Of course, the Queen never said any such thing, as I hope readers have discovered by now. One theory about the origins of the legend of the phrase “Let them eat cake” is that it is the misunderstanding of a passage from the memoirs of the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII), the brother of Louis XVI. Provence and his wife escaped from Paris to Coblenz by post-chaise in June, 1791. They stopped to eat and had meager provisions. Provence makes the allusion to a remark made by the queen of Louis XIV, Maria Theresa of Spain, in this passage: “We had a pie and some claret, but we had forgotten bread; and whilst we ate the crust with the pie, we thought of Queen Maria Theresa, who hearing one day the poor people pitied for being in want of bread, replied, ‘But, dear me, why do they not eat pie-crust?’ ”2 Pie-crust was often fed to the beggars, from the back doors of the patisseries. Antoinette, of course, never made any such remark in regard to starving people. Instead, she gave generously to the poor. There is also the phrase from Rousseau about brioche, the sweet bread of the French, Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, published in his Confessions in 1765, written when Antoinette was a child in Austria. What she did say, which is rarely quoted, is this: “It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness.”3

  A mistake which many historians make is to project onto the past the popular issues of the present. We cannot judge Antoinette by contemporary political standards which exalt the democratic process or by modern norms of behavior according to feminist notions. There was no feminist movement, and the word “feminist” was not coined until the 1830’s. There were a few women attached to the Revolution who championed social and political equality for the female sex; they tried to make the French Revolution their own, although in the end it betrayed them, and was indeed an orgy of misogyny. Mary Wollstonecraft, called the “Mother of Feminism,” saw the Revolution as the dawn of a glorious new era, as she describes in an excerpt from her book An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution; and the Effect it Has Produced in Europe. When the book was published in 1795, thousands of people had already been killed; the genocide in the Vendée, including the torture, rape and murder of women and children, was at its height. Yet Mary Wollstonecraft dismisses the mass murders and extreme violence to be merely the result of “the desperate and engaged factions.” Otherwise, she lauds the “grand theatre of political changes” which were leading France “from a state of barbarism to that of polished society...hastening the overthrow of the tremendous empire of superstition and hypocrisy, erected upon the ruins of gothic brutality and ignorance.” I have no doubt that by “empire of superstition and hypocrisy” she was referring to the Catholic Church. She rejoices that the French were at last to “grasp the sentiments of freedom” while being delivered from the “servility and voluptuousness” of the ancien régime.4 Mary Wollstonecraft, unfortunately, was not herself unfamiliar with “voluptuousness and servility,” as she later became as famous for her stormy love affairs as for her writings. Mary was the brilliant and sensitive daughter of an abusive and improvident father; she had to protect her mother and sisters from beatings and heaven knows what else. She later became involved with men who used her then abandoned her, contributing to her struggle with depression and suicidal tendencies. Mary criticized Edmund Burke’s lament for the fall of Antoinette and the end of chivalry; she hated chivalry and thought that women should be able to take care of themselves.5 Poor Mary, however, could barely support herself and the child she had by one of her lovers. Finally, she found a man who sincerely loved her, William Godwin, and they married, but their happiness was short-lived. She died as so many other woman died in those days, from complications in childbirth. Nevertheless, before her death she found great satisfaction in her motherly role that she may not have found in other areas of her life. The child she brought into the world amid such great suffering became the gifted writer Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. All of which, of course, is a story in itself.

  Antoinette was united with her husband in seeking the betterment of the French people; she championed women in her own way. Why did Antoinette so assiduously support women artists and writers? Perhaps because they were honorable professions by which women could support themselves and their children. Antoinette did not see this as part of a feminist cause but rather as a way of protecting the virtue of wo
men and their families. When left without income and deprived of the protection of a father, husband, or brother, women were more easily seduced into a life of concubinage. Impoverished women of the lower class, if they could not find work, often became prostitutes. That is why Antoinette generously gave dowries to girls so they could marry or become nuns. She patronized women with businesses as well as women in the arts. Antoinette was known to show special kindness to women with child. One of her ladies-in-waiting, Madame de la Tour du Pin, who does not refrain from criticizing Antoinette when she sees fit, remarks in her memoirs on the Queen’s consideration towards her when she was expecting.6 There is also the famous story, included in my novel Trianon, about how Antoinette got down on the floor to pick up the paints and brushes for Madame Vigée-Lebrun when the artist was pregnant.7 The Queen also founded a home for unwed mothers called the Maternity Society.8 She also supported foundling homes and orphanages for children who had been abandoned. How sad that so many of the genuine accounts of the Queen's charity are forgotten by history whereas falsehoods such as “Let them eat cake” are remembered forever.

  As mentioned at the bginning of the book, there are some odd connections between Saint Joan of Arc and Queen Marie-Antoinette. At first glance no two people appear to be as different from each other as the Habsburg archduchess and the peasant girl from Domrémy, other than a shared love for children and needlework. Joan has often been referred to as the “Maid of Lorraine” or even as “Joan of Lorraine.” Father Jean-Marie Charles-Roux, in building a case for the martyrdom of Antoinette in his book Louis XVII: La Mère et l'Enfant martyrs and in articles, points out that the Queen’s full name was Marie-Antoinette-Josèphe-Jeanne de Lorraine, even as the Maid was Jeanne de Lorraine. 9 Both women were called to their “mission” at age thirteen. At thirteen, Joan began to hear her voices; at thirteen, Antoinette was told she was to marry the heir to the French throne. Both were known for their staunch purity, and yet both were branded by enemies with the epithet of “whore.” Both the Queen and the peasant have had their reputations despoiled beyond recognition. Both suffered the ordeal of a long imprisonment in which they endured outrages against modesty. Both were forced to defend themselves against calumnies and half-truths amid the scrutiny of a public trial. Both persisted in their loyalty to the Holy See. Both were condemned to an ignominious death and each was taken to the scaffold in a cart. Unlike Saint Joan, Antoinette never had a posthumous retrial. She was never officially vindicated and her name continues to be slandered in books and movies to this day.