by Susan Nagel
Such was Louis’s confidence in the perpetuation of his dynasty that he also signed two treaties with the ‘upstart Americans’, offering the Colonies official recognition as a nation as well as money on an ‘as needed’ basis. Impressed by the skillful, tenacious yet patient negotiations of Benjamin Franklin and keen to participate in any defeat over the British, Louis XVI viewed the American independence movement as an experiment, like Franklin’s scientific probing.
Although the agreements between France and America increased hostility between England and France, there was little personal animosity between the French King and George III of England. The two exchanged friendly notes, with King George offering Louis his sincere delight that he was about to become a father. The entire family of European royalty – all, in fact, related, as brothers, sisters and cousins – considered the impending birth of the child created by the union of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI a joyous event that would impact on future alliances.
It was customary for witnesses to be present at royal births in most European countries. In England, for example, when the future George IV was born, half a dozen courtiers were on hand to attest to the fact that the baby born was indeed the child of the Queen. In France, however, it was another matter altogether: the birth of a royal child was a public event with an audience on a first-come, first-served basis. When the young Duc d’Angoulême was born on August 6, 1775, the Queen, along with the family and members of the court, remained in her sister-in-law’s chambers for an entire day until the birth of her nephew; but the birth of a child of the King brought people to Versailles from all parts of the realm. Marie Antoinette may have thought she was prepared for the birth of her child but she did not anticipate the frenzy that would accompany the baby’s arrival.
When the Queen began to feel contractions just after midnight on Saturday, December 19, the tocsin sounded at Versailles. This initial alarm set off a chain of bell-ringing throughout France. By two o’clock in the morning, the Queen was in labor and crowds began to arrive. In an attempt to provide a measure of privacy for the Queen, the King constructed a tent by tying together the tapestry screens that surrounded the antechamber, which contained her bed; the tent, however, proved useless as a crush of onlookers poured in. First Lady-in-Waiting Madame Campan recalled seeing two Savoyards standing on the furniture. Windows that had been nailed shut for the winter were smashed in order to provide air for the Queen as well as the hundreds present. The circus-like atmosphere reached a fever when nearly ten hours later, at around 11.30 a.m., in full view of hundreds of people, the Queen delivered a healthy, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter. Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte would be called a Child of France, as any child of the King would be known, but her formal title would be ‘Madame Royale’.
Immediately upon her arrival, the most anticipated baby in Europe upstaged her mother. The King exuberantly grabbed his daughter and carried her in the air, proceeding into a larger antechamber for the baby’s baptism. While crowds of people followed the King, the Queen, who by this time was completely ignored by all, convulsed then slipped into unconsciousness. She knew neither whether her baby had survived, nor what sex it was. Although Marie Antoinette had established a signal with her good friend, the Princesse de Lamballe, to inform her immediately of the baby’s gender, the Princess, swept along in the crowd, had no time to deliver the news before the Queen lost consciousness. Lamballe was supposed to say, in Italian, ‘Il figlio è nato’, if it was a boy, or ‘Una figlia è nata’, for a girl. From the midst of the crowd, Lamballe, overwhelmed with emotion, mistakenly declared, ‘La regina è andato!’(‘The Queen came!’) and promptly fainted. The Marquise du Deffand wrote to her friend Horace Walpole that the Queen had actually bled from her mouth before anyone noticed her dire condition, and, after a few minutes, during which Marie Antoinette almost perished, the chief surgeon grabbed a knife and sliced into her foot, causing it to bleed and the Queen to revive.
The extensive household staff of nearly a hundred, carefully selected before the baby’s arrival,1 included a head governess, four sous governesses, a royal hairdresser, dentist, cradle rocker, the mandatory wet nurses, and servants to serve the servants. The expenses for the baby’s household totaled 299,000 livres before her first birthday and by the age of two, the cost of serving the Princess a bowl of soup was estimated to be 5,000 livres. Furniture-makers and carpenters would also benefit. An entire suite of rooms had been designated to serve as the nursery. The apartment would face Versailles’ resplendent gardens, where the child, when she was ready, would stroll accompanied by a retinue of retainers.
The birth of the Princess also brought wealth for industries across the realm, as merchants all over France worked feverishly to prepare offerings and lavish gifts of thanks for her little royal highness. Representatives from the provinces and from a cross section of guilds arrived in Versailles to present their finest silks, porcelains, silver, crystal and cabinetry to the newborn, hoping to please and potentially gain favor – and commissions. The Church, too, organized services of thanks, and towns celebrated the momentous event with festivals and fireworks. Coins of the realm were minted featuring mother and child. The Opéra in Paris offered free performances and refreshments to the populace. Rousing shouts of ‘Santé!’ echoed in the hall as the masses drank to the health of the newborn Princess, descendant of the great Eudes who ascended the throne of France in 888. The little girl was the latest member of the Capet family, France’s ruling dynasty since the tenth century. From the time of the great Charlemagne, the French kings had been considered God’s lieutenants, a symbol of divinity on earth, and French subjects regarded the daughter of King Louis XVI as almost a goddess.
Despite the baby’s lineage, Marie-Thérèse’s baptism was accompanied by some quite un-regal behavior. France’s grand aumônier, or chief chaplain, Cardinal de Rohan of Strasbourg,2 baptized the tiny Princess on the day of her birth in the presence of her father, his brothers and sisters-in-law, courtiers, and the mob of citizens who remained for the sacrament. The Comtesse de Provence stood in for Maria Theresa of Austria, and her husband, the Comte de Provence, for King Charles III of Spain. Both were overjoyed that the baby was a girl because she would not disturb the line of succession to the throne. Despite his relief, Provence simply could not resist passing comment. When testifying to the parentage of the girl during the service, he made a remark implying that his brother was not the baby’s father, causing the King – and everyone who heard the insult – to bristle.
After the service, Marie-Thérèse was handed to her governess, the Princesse de Guémené, who carried the newborn back into the bedchamber to be reunited with her mother. When Marie Antoinette saw that the baby was a girl she realized that she had disappointed her husband, as there was still no heir. Privately, however, she delighted in her baby girl. The Duc de Croÿ, who had been Louis XV’s First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and Madame Campan both reported that as the new mother held her baby in her arms, she whispered, ‘Poor little girl, you are not what was desired, but you are no less dear to me on that account. A son would have been the property of the State. You shall be mine; you shall have my undivided care; you will share all my happiness and you will alleviate my sufferings.’ Someone in the crowd reminded the King that he had lost his bet with his mother-in-law. He nonetheless appeared besotted with his new daughter and lovingly repeated some verses in Italian by Metastasio. He may have lost the bet, said the King, but the whole world had won.
The day after the birth of Madame Royale, the Queen met with Comte Mercy to compose what she knew would be a disappointing letter to her mother. Mercy protested that the Queen was in too weak a state to correspond with her mother and explained that he had already taken care of informing the Empress judiciously, though omitting details of her daughter’s near death. That same day, in its ‘news from Versailles’ section, the Mercure de France – a publication that enjoyed the King’s patronage – reported that:
Yesterday at 11.30 in the
morning, the Queen had happily given birth to a wonderful, marvelous daughter, and Her Majesty was doing as well as could be expected. The day of this happy event was the same day that Philippe, Duc d’Anjou had been born in 1683.
The baby was healthy, the Queen was recovering, and all thought it best to spare the baby’s grandmother most of the details. The January 5, 1779, edition of the Mercure de France reported under the headline ‘NEWS FROM VERSAILLES ON DECEMBER 31, 1778’, that the Queen was recovering as well as could be expected. The article also contained an aside that the baby had been baptized privately immediately after its birth, which, according to the newspaper, was quite unusual for the French, whose ancient custom was to wait a few years before baptizing children. For a newspaper that enjoyed the royal blessing, this comment, a reminder to the public that their own Queen had strange, foreign ways, was considered audacious and disrespectful.
Despite the court’s careful attempt to conceal the Queen’s arduous labor, greatly embroidered tales spread throughout the realm. One rumor said that the Queen had been gravely wounded during the birth of her daughter. Such stories reached the ears of Empress Maria Theresa who became convinced that there was a conspiracy afoot to hurt her daughter. She even stated that she was certain that there were people who wanted to make sure that the Queen of France would bear no more children and no heir to the throne. And indeed there were those who were so inclined. One such instance surfaced a few weeks after the birth of the baby, when the curé of the Madeleine de la Cité approached Madame Campan and asked for an audience with the Queen. Campan wrote that the priest delivered into the hands of the Queen a tiny box containing her wedding ring with a note which read, ‘I have received under the seal of confession the ring which I send to your Majesty, with an avowal that it was stolen from you in 1771, in order to be used in sorceries, to prevent your having any children.’
The King and Queen, doting on their new baby, stated that they wanted to create a cocoon of beauty and love around their daughter. Each of them had grown up acutely aware that they were not their parents’ favorite child. Louis-Auguste, like his wife, had been neglected as a child; he had not got along with his father at all, and the two had spent very little time together. By the time Louis-Auguste was twelve, both of his parents had died. Marie Antoinette, though adored by her father, was nonetheless very young when he died and when the Empress had time to consider her children, she focused on the future Emperor and her older daughters.
Louis XVI was determined that his daughter would never feel unloved or rejected and he cancelled many of his outings and engagements in order to spend as much time as possible with his wife and baby daughter. Attentive courtiers joined the King passing many hours and days by the Queen’s bedside and in the nursery. In order to provide her well-wishers with comfort, Marie Antoinette had ordered specially designed chairs. By January 3, the Queen invited about fifty guests at a time to her rooms. Little entertainments were devised to amuse the Queen as she recuperated. Guests were encouraged to visit Marie-Thérèse in her nursery, but were not allowed to touch her. On January 19, Madame Royale’s one-month birthday, Marie Antoinette moved to a chaise in order to greet the Spanish ambassador who arrived bearing a spectacular gift for the baby from her godfather – a pair of diamond earrings and a diamond Saint-Esprit pendant suspended on a silk cord.
In many ways, the birth of Madame Royale heralded a sea change in the royal couple’s relationship. Louis XVI, so enthralled with his wife and new baby, regaled 120,000 livres on the Queen as a present for her to spend as she saw fit. Marie Antoinette was moved by her husband’s tenderness and viewed him in a more loving light. She decided that she would try to get pregnant again as soon as possible. She was also doubtless aware of the fact that she could escape many of the rigors of protocol when pregnant. Motherhood consumed her days. If the newborn baby had been a boy, as the heir to the throne he would have been immediately whisked away to wet nurses; but as the Queen had predicted, by giving birth to a daughter she was able to enjoy far more latitude in raising and caring for the baby herself. For eighteen days, the Queen breastfed her own child – an act that horrified her mother. The Empress immediately sent instructions to her daughter to cease such ‘barbarism’ and warned her that breastfeeding would prevent her from getting pregnant again, believing it in effect a contraceptive. Marie Antoinette stopped breastfeeding her daughter.
Before the birth of Madame Royale, the Queen had spent hours each day sitting before her hairdresser as he created the hairstyles that had been the talk of Europe. Pregnancy, however, had caused the loss of a great deal of her hair causing Léonard and the Queen’s parfumeur Jean-Louis Fargeon to work together in creating a pomade to strengthen the roots of her hair. Marie Antoinette wanted to spend more time with her baby and fewer hours in front of the looking-glass, and so although her hair had been repaired, she displayed a new penchant for a simpler coiffure and manner of dress, preferring loosely tumbling tresses tied by a large silk ribbon in the style of a little girl, as Vigée-Lebrun would often paint her.
The royal couple also made public statements reflecting their happiness. The Queen commissioned her dressmaker to create a splendid gown for the statue of the Virgin of Monflières as an offering of thanks, and she paid off the debts of women imprisoned for not having had enough money to pay their own baby’s nurses. The Queen also offered alms to the poor in the name of the newborn princess. The King, as the nation’s father, passed an edict three weeks after the birth of Madame Royale on behalf of all orphans in France whose fathers could not or would not ‘protect them against the dangers at so tender an age’. Until that time in France, orphaned children were often transported great distances in open vehicles to the foundling hospital in Paris, even in inclement weather, regardless of their health. The edict ended this practice and by it local charitable institutions were compelled to assume responsibility for the forsaken children. In addition, Louis opened his treasury to provide the extra revenue needed in the provinces to support the welfare of these orphans.
Despite the great joy at court, the Queen’s first public appearance, called the cérémonie de relevailles, or the ‘ceremony of getting up’, on February 8, 1779, was not an unqualified success. First, the King and Queen broke with tradition, celebrating in grand style as if a male heir to the throne had been born. If a boy had been born, the French people would have expected the Queen to attend a service at Notre Dame in Paris as well as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, but not in the case of the birth of a daughter. Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI proceeded as they saw fit and defied precedent. The crowds mumbled that the Queen’s audacity proved her domination and manipulation of the King, and that all of the fanfare must be just one more offensive foreign custom; for why would the King and Queen hail the birth of a girl?
As part of this grand celebration, one hundred wedding ceremonies were performed simultaneously in all of the parishes of Paris, the brides dressed at the Queen’s expense. Marie Antoinette announced that she was going to give each young couple an additional dowry of 500 livres and that she would pay for the care of children born of these marriages – 15 livres a month if the mothers nursed their own babies but only 10 livres if they sought outside help. Despite her mother’s disapproval, Marie Antoinette informed the Empress that she wanted to encourage French mothers to breastfeed their own children. Despite her husband’s loathing for the late writer, Marie Antoinette believed that her obvious nod to Rousseau and his prescription that mothers ought to breastfeed and care for their own babies would make her more popular with the citizens of France who had embraced the concepts of the recently deceased philosophe. The Queen, however, had miscalculated. It had been a particularly barren year for the French farmers, the cost of food had soared, and French citizens, more acutely concerned with their stomachs than with theoretical notions, had been angered by reports that Marie Antoinette’s exorbitant spending had caused their misery. The Queen’s detractors denounced
her largesse to the newlyweds as gratuitous. As she rode through the streets of Paris, ordinary citizens scowled at her not only for what they considered her disrespect for French tradition, but also because they perceived her to be insensitive to their hardships.
At the court of Versailles, as well as the other courts of Europe, there was immediate speculation about marriage prospects for the newborn Princess. Although the ancient Salic law in France precluded girls from inheriting the throne, Marie-Thérèse was heiress to vast properties and wealth. Among possible future husbands for the daughter of the King of France were the future King of Sweden, the brother of the future King of Spain, an Austrian archduke, and the son of Marie Antoinette’s favorite sister, Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and Sicily. In France, the most junior branch of the Bourbon family, the Orléans faction, whose members had been asserting claims to the throne since the days of Louis XIV, proposed a union with Louis-Philippe, son of the then Duc d’Orléans. Marie Antoinette was also a cousin to the Orléans branch through her father. Remembering her own suffering when she left Vienna, Marie Antoinette liked the idea of her daughter remaining at home. She determined that if she were to have no sons, Marie-Thérèse should marry the young Duc d’Angoulême, the eldest son of the Comte d’Artois, third in line for the throne of France after his childless uncle and his own father. Madame de la Tour du Pin recalled in her memoirs that although the Duc d’Orléans ‘wanted his son, [Louis-Philippe] the Duc de Chartres, to marry Madame Royale … the Duc d’Angoulême … was the marriage favored by the Queen. The Duc d’Orléans’ request was therefore refused, and he took it as a mortal affront.’