Yet despite the snide remarks of courtiers and ambassadors and despite his own misgivings, Louis was not unintelligent. Considerable care had been taken with his education, especially after the deaths of his father and older brother made him the dauphin, the direct heir to the throne. He applied himself methodically, perhaps even taking refuge in his studies from the demands of a court for which he had so little natural grace and predilection. And his accomplishments were not unimpressive. Eventually he learned English, German, and Italian. With an excellent memory for detail, he excelled in astronomy, geography, and history, and with the help of his tutor he undertook a translation of the English historian Gibbon. He read all his life, occasionally commenting on the newspapers he had perused, even purchasing a copy of Diderot's celebrated Encyclopedia in 1777. He also adored maps, knew French geography exceptionally well, and sometimes plotted out the trips he hoped one day to make through his kingdom.' Indeed, he had an almost obsessive fascination with facts and figures, as demonstrated by his immense hunting logs and by the endless lists and summary tables drawn up with all the precision of an accountant or a Benedictine monk: of the names and careers over time of all the palace servants and the keepers of his hounds; of the names and descriptions of every horse he had ridden since age eleven (a total of 128); of the animals sighted in the various royal parks; and of every detail in his daily household budget. He maintained a personal diary as well, but this, too, was essentially a factual recapitulation of activities, in which hunting again took pride of place. Nowhere were there any indications of personal sentiments or ideas.'
Perhaps more than any of his Bourbon predecessors, Louis also received careful instruction in what his tutors conceived to be the duties and obligations of kingship, instructions that while still a boy he dutifully copied down as a kind of royal catechism.' There can be no doubt that he was deeply influenced by his religious training, and that he took Christian piety and morality as seriously as any French monarch of the early modern period. His tutor had him vow "to imprint the precepts of my religion deeply into my heart," and throughout his life he attended mass daily and performed his "Easter duties" year after year, as carefully noted in his diary. His divine right to rule was clear and unquestioned: "I know that I owe it to God for having chosen me to reign," he wrote on the first page of his "catechism." And it was probably from the lessons of his tutors and from his sense of Christian duty and paternalism that he acquired a firm belief in a king's responsibility to his people. "My people should know that my first care and desire will be to relieve and improve their condition ... The charity of the prince must be modeled on the charity of God," a sentiment he reiterated both before and during the Revolution.' At the same time, he seemed to feel a psychological need to be appreciated by his people and to receive their adulation for his efforts on their behalf. He was particularly affected by the popular reception he received at the time of his coronation in Reims in 1775-one year after his ascension to the throne-and he described his 1786 trip from Paris to the port city of Cherbourg, a paradelike carriage ride among the cheering masses, as one of the happiest moments of his reign. To the end of his life, he felt deeply pained if crowds failed to shout the traditional "Long live the king!" or if they did so with insufficient vigor.'
If he had picked up from his tutors and from his own readings the Enlightenment emphasis on "utility" and the "general will," it was clear that he understood such concepts in distinctly paternalistic terms. The king must consider the "general will" in making his decisions, but it was the monarch's will that was the final arbiter, the very "substance of the law."" And coexisting with his belief in the king's responsibility for the welfare of the people, he retained a keen sense of a hierarchical, aristocratic society of status and caste that was far removed from the ethos of the Enlightenment. He was clearly possessed of the same dual vision, the contradictory goalsof popular welfare on the one hand, and the maintenance of privilege and royal authority on the other-that bedeviled a whole generation if monarchs in the late eighteenth century, monarchs sometimes referred to as "enlightened despots." The intrinsic difficulties of this divided objective were compounded by Louis' personality, by a lack of self-confidence that seemed even to increase as time went on. Torn both by a pathological uncertainty of his own judgment and by disagreements among his advisers-toward reform on the one hand, and the preservation of authority and tradition on the other-he frequently found decisionmaking an excruciating process. According to Madame de Tourzel, his children's governess, who would accompany him to Varennes, he had "an exaggerated lack of self-confidence, always persuaded that others understood things better than he." "His heart," wrote Madame de Campan after his death, "led him to see the truth, but his principles, his prejudices, his fears, the clamoring demands of the privileged and the pious, intimidated him and brought him to abandon the ideas that his love for his people had led him initially to adopt.""
His sense of identity had been further complicated in 1770, when state policy and the international system of alliances found him a wife and a future queen. Marie-Antoinette was the second youngest of Austrian archduchess Maria-Theresa's sixteen children, and a year younger than Louis himself. Graceful and attractive if not beautiful, with her blond hair, her aquiline Hapsburg nose, and her thick lower lip, she had received only the rudiments of an education. She spoke French well enough, with a slight German accent, but she long had difficulty writing correctly and knew next to nothing of history, geography, or literature. The tutor sent to Vienna to prepare the fourteen-year-old girl for her future role as French princess described her as intelligent but extremely willful and with a short attention span for anything that smacked of study or serious conversation. One could scarcely conceive of a more complete mismatch: the heavy, introverted, insecure Louis and the elegant, vivacious, self-assured young princess." The potential for discord was compounded by the sexual dysfunction that plagued the couple for the first seven years of their marriage, a genital malformation making it painful and nearly impossible for Louis to consummate his union. As time went by without a pregnancy, and as word leaked out that Marie found her husband boring and physically repulsive, tongues began wagging about the queen's reputed dalliances and Louis' lack of male competence. It was a humiliation that could have only further lowered the self-esteem of a man whose royal predecessors had been celebrated for their sexual prowess.13
The near-disastrous marriage took a turn for the better in 1777, three years after Louis had ascended to the throne, when Joseph II, the Austrian emperor and Marie's oldest brother, traveled to Versailles in an effort to patch things up. The king was persuaded to undergo a small operation to facilitate his conjugal performance. At the same time the young queen was berated by her brother into accepting her responsibilities as a wife and mother for the sake of her family's international strategies.' The success of Joseph's marriage counseling was impressive indeed: five pregnancies ensued over the next eight years, with a daughter and two sons surviving infancy. When his first child was born, Louis was overwhelmed with joy and with gratitude to his wife, and he proudly announced at court that he was hard at work conceiving more progeny.''
Especially after Louis began to sire heirs, always an important concern for the French population, the king acquired remarkably high favor in public opinion. Following their disillusionment with the reign of the previous monarch, Louis XV-with his endless mistresses and his broad failures in international affairs-many people seemed to seize on the young king, widely praised for his perceived sincerity and his hardworking application to duty, his faithfulness to his wife, and even his religious piety. His very bonhomie, his unpretentiousness, his distance from the court, his absence of concern for his physical appearance-all seemed to endear him to the public. The gossip pages of theMemoires secrets described him in 1778: "No one could be more natural and amiable than Louis XVI." And there were stories of his kindness and familiarity with the palace servants, and of his return from the hunt "neither shaven nor powder
ed, his clothes in disarray."" This strongly positive popular image would persist and even intensify into the early years of the Revolution.
The queen, on the other hand, had never overcome, nor made much effort to overcome, the decidedly negative image acquired early in her reign. Pregnancy and the overseeing of her children's education had slowed her style somewhat, attenuating the perpetual carnival atmosphere of her first years in the French palace. Yet she had never felt entirely comfortable in France and always disliked the endless rounds of public ceremony associated with Versailles. She became ever more private and cliquish in her socializing, gathering around her a small group of attractive young women and men, notably the count of Artois (the king's youngest brother), the princess de Lamballe, and the beautiful duchess de Polignac. The "Austrian woman," as she was called dismissively, became the subject of endless rumors and innuendoes. She was even featured in pornographic accounts of alleged incestuous and lesbian activities. The tawdry Diamond Necklace Affair, in which the queen was accused of complicity in an expensive court swindle, further tarnished her public image." Given the king's limited interest in the court and the queen's exclusiveness, many of the older aristocratic families found themselves marginalized or ostracized. Several of the younger members of these families would soon embrace the reforms of the Revolution."
Although most of the rumors about Marie's sex life were certainly false, one of her male favorites did in fact assume a very special relationship with the queen. She first met the Swedish count and military officer Axel von Fersen when they were still adolescents, she a princess and he on his grand tour of Europe. He was away for several years, fighting under General Rochambeau in the American Revolutionary War, but he returned to Versailles periodically thereafter, whenever his military duties permitted. Never enthralled by the French, the queen was immediately attracted to this handsome foreigner, with his quiet dignity and reserve, so unlike the other young men at court. Through her help, Fersen acquired a French regiment of his own and a residence in Paris. After the birth of her last child in 1786, Marie and the king began living separately once again, and it was probably during this period that she and the Swedish count became particularly close. We will probably never know if they were lovers. Fersen always maintained a remarkably discreet position at court. But they had numerous encounters alone in the Petit Trianon palace in the forests near Versailles. The count de Saint-Priest, a minister who knew the royal couple well, believed there was no doubt about the matter, describing Fersen as the queen's "titular lover"-as Madame de Pompadour was once called the "titular mistress" of Louis XV. Whatever the extent of their physical relationship, the two maintained a deep and close attachment-as was made amply clear in Fersen's private correspondence with his sister-an attachment that would play a central role in the flight of the royal family in 1791.19
The King and the Revolution
By the late 178os the king and the queen and all of France had been swept up in a period of state instability and crisis. The country's ever-increasing fiscal difficulties were driven by France's successful but enormously expensive involvement in the War of the American Revolution and by an inefficient and inequitable tax structure that left the state struggling to pay its bills. The role of the king in the crisis of the Old Regime and in the coming of the French Revolution can be argued endlessly. But Louis' most pervasive impact on the train of events probably came less from what he did than from what he did not do: from his very lack of leadership, his indecision and inconsistency.
[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]
Count Axel von Fersen in zy85.
In the early days of his reign, following the death of his grandfather Louis XV in 1774, the young monarch seems to have applied himself to the kingship with a considerable effort of will and a sense of duty. He spent long hours reading reports and communicating with councilors. His correspondence with his foreign minister, awk ward and a bit clumsy at times, revealed nevertheless an able grasp of the complexities of international relations. He carefully followed the revolutionary events in the American colonies, and he measurably contributed in developing a policy of French intervention, in part to "support an oppressed people who have come to ask my help," but above all to direct a blow at England, "the rival and natural enemy of my house," for its past "insults to the honor of France."" Yet he had always relied heavily on the advice and decisions of the two elder councilors who had directed and tutored him since he first became king, the counts Maurepas and Vergennes. With the successive deaths of his two mentors in 1781 and 1787, with the fiscal crisis of the 178os becoming ever more intractable, with the intrigues and infighting among his remaining ministers intensifying, the king turned nervously from one adviser to another and seemed increasingly overwhelmed by the tasks at hand. Year after year he spent more time hunting, and the number of "kills" listed in his logs rose sharply." He continued, in principle, to want the best for "his people," but he remained uncertain and divided as to how that aim might be achieved. Those who observed him at close hand in the late 178os found him growing almost lethargic. Always taciturn and uncommunicative, he now seemed even more inarticulate and silent, even sleeping-and snoring-in the midst of critical debates.22 Much of his later reign oscillated between progressive ministers and caretaker ministers, between efforts for dramatic, radical reforms from above and reactionary retrenchment. Finally, in mid-1788, under the ascendancy first of Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne and then of the Swiss banker Jacques Necker, Louis was persuaded to take the momentous step of convoking the Estates General for consultations on the deteriorating situation. But the continual fluctuations in policy not only created a deep sense of uncertainty and instability in the nation, but alsothrough the inconsistent fits of reform-helped educate and accustom the population to the possibility of massive change.
The later 178os also saw a progressive rise of the queen's political influence. In the first years of his reign, Louis had systematically excluded Marie from policy decisions and council meetings-following the advice of the king's anti-Austrian tutors, or so the queen believed. Yet she had long exercised an indirect influence through her ability to make or break individual ministers. Her involvement in court intrigue undoubtedly played a role in the fall of the reforming minister Turgot in 1775 and of Necker's first ministry in 1781. At the time, her brother the emperor had been outraged by her "meddling," particularly as it did not necessarily advance the Austrian position. But Joseph II and his able ambassador, the count de Mercy-Argenteuil, regularly coached the young queen on Hapsburg policy, initiating her into the workings of international politics and grooming her to be a veritable Austrian agent at the heart of the French regime.23 As the Revolution approached, as Louis lost his most trusted mentors, and as he became more perplexed and uncertain through the failure of the various reforms, he came to rely on Marie for advice of all kinds. By 1788 he had begun inviting her to attend certain council meetings. Even when she was not present, he would sometimes leave the room in the midst of discussions to consult with her-much to the consternation and bewilderment of the royal ministers. And unlike Louis, the queen was not plagued by indecision and uncertainty. She never doubted for a moment that the reforms being proposed by "patriots" and liberal ministers were anathema to everything she believed in. Her steady and determined opposition to all reforms invariably came to influence the king as well.24
Throughout the first months of the Revolution, through the momentous events of the creation of a National Assembly, the popular uprisings in Paris against the Bastille, the suppression of noble and clerical privilege, and the dismantling of the "feudal system," the king remained remarkably popular among almost every element of the French population. The patriot deputies were deeply disappointed by his speech on June 23, in which he adhered to the position of the conservative nobility and rejected the existence of a National Assembly. But he was soon forgiven in the rush of events that followed, events that turned clearly to the advantage of the Revo
lu tionaries. Most patriots remained convinced that he was well meaning and genuinely seeking the best interests of the nation, that it was the classic case of a good king badly advised. Later developments seemed to present evidence that Louis had put aside once and for all the "prejudices" of his caste and embraced the Revolution. The positive perception of the monarch was further reinforced by the great Festival of Federation, on the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. It was here, in the presence of several hundred thousand cheering people, that Justin George, Etienne Radet, and the other national guardsmen from Varennes had seen Louis raise his hand before the "altar of the Fatherland" and swear an oath to uphold the new constitution. Since everyone knew that Louis was a devout man for whom such an oath must be a sacred act, there was widespread rejoicing that the Revolution had now been won and that the monarch was definitively on the side of the people, well deserving the title of "king of the French."
But in retrospect we know that this popular view was more a product of wishful thinking than of reality. Already in early June 1789 the king had been angered by the perceived insensitivity of the patriot deputies to the sad death of his oldest son. He was also deeply unhappy with the National Assembly's failure to grant him an absolute veto in September 1789. Yet for Louis and for the queen the pivotal event of that year was undoubtedly the terrible "October Days." On October 5-6 several hundred Parisian women, followed somewhat later by several thousand armed national guardsmen, marched on Versailles and coerced the king into moving his residence to Paris. No one in the royal entourage could ever forget the queen's early-morning race for safety down the corridors of the palace, clothed only in her dressing gown, followed closely by the nursemaids and the royal children.25 We will never know whether the crowds who pursued her sought to do her harm or only wished to talk to her and appeal for bread. But Marie herself had no doubt that she had escaped murder by the slimmest of margins. The royal family's slow carriage drive back to Paris that afternoon, followed by the rough and boisterous crowds of men and women-some with the severed heads of royal guards held aloft on pikes-only further intensified the horror and revulsion of the experience.
When the King Took Flight Page 4