Marie-Therese, Child of Terror: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter

by Susan Nagel

  Long processions of tradesmen jammed the roads leading to Versailles, offering gifts befitting a future king of France. Butchers and pastry chefs offered foods. Clothiers fashioned suits and shoes of the finest materials for the little boy. A group of chimney sweeps brought a beautiful chimney from which a young boy emerged and delivered a congratulatory message to the King. Locksmiths brought a lock from which when opened a model of a dauphin popped out. The only eerily inappropriate statement in all of this seemingly universal adoration was made by a group of gravediggers who came to Versailles bearing gifts of their trade. The King’s aunt, Madame Sophie, intercepted them and turned them away.

  Representing the brand new and very grateful nation, the United States of America, which had just defeated Britain in the decisive battle at Yorktown, Benjamin Franklin made the pilgrimage to Versailles and reported to Madame Brillon, ‘Before he was yet a day old, I was there, not in the capacity of an Eastern King, but rather the contrary, and from the West.’ Franklin, who referred to the King of France as the ‘father of America’, professed that he was ‘joyous’ to see ‘his friends happy’. In Austria the populace perceived the delivery of a Bourbon-Habsburg heir to the French throne as a triumph for all of Austria, and they too celebrated with abandon. In Vienna, the Queen’s brother, Emperor Joseph (who had grown even fonder of his sister after his recent visit, writing that she was ‘charming’ and ‘bewitching’), was elated. The Queen received congratulations from the Hessian Princesses and King Gustav III. In a note to Princess Charlotte of Hesse-Darmstadt on November 26, Marie Antoinette thanked her friend for her compliments and added, ‘My son progresses marvelously. I wish you could judge for yourself this winter.’

  When the Queen had made her first entrance into Paris for her cérémonie des relevailles after the birth of Madame Royale there had been a definite froideur from the crowds. Now, in January 1782, when the Queen appeared for a service of thanks at the churches of Notre Dame and Sainte-Geneviève, the crowds cheered. A splendid dinner for hundreds was prepared at the Hätel de Ville. Afterwards, the Queen requested her coachmen take a detour to the Hätel de Noailles, where the hero of the American revolutionary war, Lafayette, was staying. As the royal couple greeted him, the crowds roared with thunderous approval. Unfortunately, the Queen and King mistook the crowds’ screams as being in honor of their son rather than a tribute to the man who personified the notion of liberty for the masses. The following day the royal couple dined with the Comte d’Artois at his home, the Temple Palace, a sinister place with a medieval dungeon that would, just over a decade later, serve as their prison.

  When Madame Royale was born, the King had given his wife a generous cash gift of 120,000 livres. After the birth of the Dauphin, the Queen received the enormous sum of 300,000 livres. Even though Louis Joseph inevitably eclipsed his elder sister in terms of public adoration, his birth in no way removed Marie-Thérèse from her father’s affection. From the time when, at eight months, she uttered her first word – ‘papa’ – Madame Royale was the apple of her father’s eye. The Marquis de Bombelles recounted in his journal that the little girl once told him that she loved her father better than her mother because the Queen, famous for her regal carriage and imposing walk, always walked ‘straight ahead of me and doesn’t even look to see whether I am following her … whereas Papa takes me by the hand and looks after me’.

  In the spring of 1782, Grand Duke Paul, the future Czar Paul I of Russia, visited Versailles traveling with his wife under the names the Comte and Comtesse du Nord. The future monarch was treated to a masked ball and illuminations, and although there were far fewer servants at Versailles than at the time of King Louis XIV, the palace still inspired awe. The Grand Duke, overwhelmed by his hosts’ hospitality, gallantly addressed the royal family by stating to three-and-a-half-year-old Madame Royale that it would be his honor to host her in his dominions some day when she became a woman. The two young Children of France were considered the most privileged and blessed on earth, and neither the future Czar nor the Princess could possibly have foreseen the tragic circumstances under which that invitation would later be accepted.

  By autumn, about the time of the Dauphin’s first year birthday in October, the Princesse de Guémené had resigned her post as Governess to the Children of France owing to a scandal involving her husband’s debts. The Queen decided to use the opportunity to mend fences with Madame de Polignac. As the Polignacs were always in need of money, Marie Antoinette offered the Duchess the position. The Queen, who had grown comfortable in her role as mother of the heir to the throne, seemed again willing to forgive as she handed her children to Polignac with the comment that their first governess had been entrusted to provide the children with correctness while their new governess would be trusted with their future because of friendship. While it seemed the two women had reconciled their differences, some courtiers whispered about the wisdom of this choice. The post of Governess to the Children of France was traditionally a prestigious one offered only to women of noble birth. Madame de Polignac, born Gabrielle Yolande de Polastron, was certainly not that and few believed that the newly minted Duchesse de Polignac was qualified for the job.

  The Queen dismissed this last concern because she intended to supervise her children’s education herself. Her brother, Joseph, chided her for this: he wanted his sister to become more involved in European politics and spend less time on motherhood, and accused her of squandering her position as Queen of France. Nonetheless, Marie Antoinette oversaw her children’s academic tutors with rigor and personally instructed her daughter in needlework. Madame Elisabeth, the King’s pious sister, was placed in charge of Madame Royale’s religious and moral education. The King, who had a passion for geography, commissioned the construction of a gigantic globe for his children, attended their geography lessons whenever he could and made up games as a method for his children to retain information.

  Marie Antoinette demonstrated sensitivity and intelligence as a mother. Madame Campan recounted one time when the King requested that four-year-old Marie-Thérèse be brought to meet his aunt, Madame Louise. Madame Louise, who was lame and a dwarf, had become a Carmelite nun. To prepare Marie-Thérèse for her visit, the Queen had Madame Campan dress in the Carmelite habit and, in addition, had a doll made up wearing the same clothes so that Marie-Thérèse would neither be afraid nor express any shock when she arrived at the convent. The exercise was a success. The nuns found the little girl so well behaved that one of the women commented that she would be fit to take the veil. Fearing that she might have offended the Queen with that remark, the nun apologized. The Queen said, on the contrary, it was a great compliment to her daughter. Before departing the convent, the Queen asked her daughter if she had anything she would like to ask the ladies. Madame Royale made a lasting impression when, at only four years of age, she requested that they all pray for her at their Mass. She appeared to be a little angel.

  Shortly before the Dauphin’s second birthday Marie Antoinette suffered another miscarriage – her third. By the following summer, to her great relief and that of the King, she was pregnant again. Ostensibly to celebrate his increasing brood, the King purchased the castle at Saint-Cloud, with its fabulous cascading waters and bird’s-eye view of Paris. However, the real reason behind the purchase was the Dauphin’s health. By 1784, it was becoming clear that Louis Joseph had severe health problems. In May, the two-year-old became violently ill and stopped urinating. He seemed to make a quick recovery, which made the Queen a little more optimistic, but his health remained a constant worry to the royal couple. As he grew, his body formed with one shoulder higher than the other, and he was quite frail and unable to join his sister in games. Many members of Europe’s royal families had suffered deformities and fragile health and it seemed that the Dauphin would not escape this fate.

  With another pregnancy under way, Marie Antoinette began to consider marriage matches for Madame Royale once more. As the daughter of the King of France, little Marie-Thé
rèse was known as the ‘King’s Choice’ and considered to be the most eligible lady in Christendom. One contender for her hand was Gustavus Adolphus, the future King of Sweden. His father, Gustav III, visited Versailles in the summer of 1784, traveling incognito under the name ‘the Count of Haga’. The Swedish King had professed to consider the late King, Louis XV, a second father and had not only received financial aid from the French, but was also a staunch ally in political affairs and a personal friend to the Bourbons. Gustav was invited to both formal events at Versailles and the less formal ‘en famille’ garden parties and celebratory illuminations at the Petit Trianon. A hot air balloon emblazoned with the monograms of both kings and the name ‘Marie Antoinette’ floated above as a special treat for the visiting Swedish monarch. Marie Antoinette made a specific point of introducing the young Madame Royale to the man who might become the girl’s father-in-law, and he was charmed. After Gustav returned home to Sweden in the autumn, he had his son send a letter with his own portrait to the Queen, so beginning the process of royal matchmaking. Under her mother’s guidance, Marie-Thérèse wrote thanking her ‘brother’ and ‘cousin’ – a customary address – and sending him great compliments. Marie Antoinette affirmed to the King of Sweden that it was clear that his son was ‘superior’ and ‘advanced’. Marie Antoinette further flattered Gustav III, telling him that the ruler had made a lasting impression on her young daughter.

  Another marriage prospect for Marie-Thérèse was the son of her mother’s favorite sister, Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples and Sicily, who sent an emissary, the Chevalier de Bressac, in the summer of 1787 to negotiate on behalf of the hereditary Prince. Often, in the case of a future queen when a marriage arrangement was agreed upon, the young girl would be taken from her own country and brought to the palace of her fiancé so that she could be groomed according to the customs of her adopted country. Although Marie Antoinette adored her sister, the Queen was not yet ready to send her little girl abroad and she therefore ignored the proposal.

  On March 27, 1785, Easter Sunday, the Queen gave birth to a second son, Louis Charles. This delivery was the easiest of all of her children and from the moment of his birth, the new ‘Duc de Normandie’ was the sunniest as well. Louis was ecstatic, ignoring the gossip that he was not the boy’s father. Critics of the Queen and jealous family members, now even further from the throne, had been spreading rumors that the infant’s real father was the Queen’s alleged lover, Comte Fersen, aide-de-camp to King Gustav III. Fersen had indeed been at Versailles with the Swedish King the previous summer when the Queen had conceived. The timing was unfortunate but the King, who knew the times of his own conjugal visits, seemed completely satisfied that he was the Duc de Normandie’s father and was thrilled with his new robust son.

  A year after the birth of Louis Charles, the Queen gave birth to her fourth child, whom they named Sophie. When the King informed the Spanish ambassador that his wife had given birth to a girl, the ambassador gallantly responded, ‘As Your Majesty keeps his Princes at his side he now has a means of bestowing presents [his daughters] on the rest of Europe.’ Madame Vigée-Lebrun was commissioned to paint a joyful family portrait of the Queen surrounded by her children with the baby Sophie in her cradle.

  Unfortunately, Sophie was born with an abnormally large head and other deformities not unknown to the Bourbon and Habsburg families. Although the King and Queen tried to ignore the baby’s shortcomings and hoped for the best, Sophie died eleven months later. The bereft Queen’s favorite artist then painted the baby out of the family portrait leaving a happy and glowing Queen Marie Antoinette, her three children and an empty cradle, a lamentable reminder of the family tragedy.

  The entire court was in mourning during the summer of 1787. Eight-year-old Marie-Thérèse was taking the death of her baby sister especially hard. In a touching gesture, one of Marie Antoinette’s least favorite sisters, Marie Christine, traveled to Versailles under the name ‘Comtesse de Bellyé’ to offer comfort. The sisters spent time together at Versailles and included Marie-Thérèse in their walks around the gardens at the Petit Trianon. After Marie Christine’s departure, the Queen wrote to her sister that she was ‘sitting on a bench where we sat together’ and that her visit had been a tonic for the entire family. She also wrote that, while she was writing the letter, Marie-Thérèse was watering Marie Christine’s favorite garden of chrysanthemums, tending them in her honor, poignantly observing that the little girl was zealously focused on making the flowers live. The Queen expressed in her note to her sister her great relief that Marie-Thérèse, who had been so silent at the beginning of the summer when she first met her aunt, shortly after baby Sophie’s death, was talking once again. She assured Marie Christine that the King himself had not stopped talking about his sister-in-law. That winter, as Marie-Thérèse turned nine, the King’s aunt, Madame Louise, the Carmelite nun, died and the court was in mourning once again.

  Little Louis Charles, although at an impressionable age, was simply too young to understand the sadness around him, and he provided the levity so hungered for by his family. The adorable ‘chou d’amour’, as the Queen referred to her second son, quickly became his mother’s favorite. She wrote that he was ‘a peasant child … big … fresh-faced and fat’, and remarked that, while Louis Joseph was being prepared for his serious role, and was in fact quite proficient in history at a very young age, little Louis Charles was simply the family pet. Significantly, no one in the family had been bestowed with the title ‘Duc de Normandie’ for centuries – not since the fourth son of Charles VII. It had been the King’s idea to give his second son the title after an excursion to the Norman town of Cherbourg in 1786, during which the infant was hailed with gusto by the local population. Louis XVI would regularly embrace Louis Charles thereafter and say with great effusiveness and tenderness, ‘Come here, my little Norman, your name will bring you happiness!’

  François Hüe, a servant to the boy who later became a trusted member of the Restoration regime, recounted many anecdotes in his memoir about Louis Charles. One day, according to Hüe, the little boy began to ‘hiss’ and ‘boo’. Both the Queen and Hüe told him to stop his antics. The boy responded: ‘I did my lesson so badly that I’m booing myself.’ Hüe also recalled that to get the very active boy to sleep, Marie Antoinette would sometimes play softly on her harp. One evening at Saint-Cloud, while the Queen was playing him a lullaby, Madame Elisabeth commented ‘Voilà! Charles is sleeping.’ Louis Charles immediately popped up and said, ‘Ah, my dear aunt, could anyone sleep when listening to my mother the Queen?’

  Louis Charles adored his mother and she loved to read him the fables of La Fontaine. Hüe reported that Louis Charles had an especially sensitive understanding of his mother’s temperament and knew that she loved flowers. Every morning at Versailles the boy would go outside accompanied by a chambermaid and his dog, Coco, to pick flowers for his mother’s table de toilette. The King became aware of his son’s routine and offered him a small garden and some tools of his own. Louis Charles worked enthusiastically and diligently on his garden, exerting effort even on the hottest days. One day, a courtier came to offer the boy help but Louis Charles refused. He thanked the man but said that the flowers would be less pleasing to his mother if someone else had tended them.

  Louis Charles also liked to make his sister smile. Sometimes, during her lessons, when she could not recall a fact, he would whisper something sweet to rid her of her frustration. The two were inseparable, and Marie-Thérèse took on a very protective and maternal role toward her youngest brother, treating him like her own baby. She doted on him and indulged him, petted him and pampered him like a favored doll. To look at, Louis Charles was irresistible; he was the most beautiful of Marie Antoinette’s children. His pale, ash blond, shoulder-length ringlets appear in painting after painting; and courtiers wrote of his cerulean blue eyes and long lashes. Everyone found him delightful and his cherubic appearance mirrored a truly loving and sweet-natured child.

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bsp; A physiognomic assessment of his sister, however, who also possessed truly angelic features, would have completely missed the mark. Madame Royale was proving that she could be decidedly difficult.

  Chapter IV

  Once upon a Time

  From her earliest days Marie-Thérèse was a witness to and participant in extraordinary times. In the second half of the eighteenth century most of the world considered life at Versailles to be the zenith of refinement and civility. Many courtiers in the orbit of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette as well as foreign visitors chronicled its dizzying opulence. First-hand accounts by loyal courtiers such as Pauline de Bearn, Madame de la Tour du Pin, Madame Campan and others have invited us into the celebrated court at Versailles and portrayed with great sympathy the much-maligned Queen of France. American writers including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Gouverneur Morris, and Thomas Jefferson also sent home their own impressions to colonists eager to glean details; though they were democrats, they too seemed to have had great admiration for Marie Antoinette. Politicians, soldiers and historians have exhaustively documented the last days of the glory of the Bourbon regime, its demise all the more shocking for the incredible savagery that destroyed it. No one, however, but Marie-Thérèse, Child of France, knew what it was like to take one’s first steps along the red carpet surrounded by the world’s most dazzling diamonds and blinding candles, reflected in the thousands of mirrors in the fabled Galerie des Glaces.