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

by Susan Nagel

  The celebrations for the fourteenth, the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, were orchestrated by the National Assembly. The spectacle was held on the Champ de Mars, a field named for the god of war, which faced the École Militaire.4 Although it was planned to be a ‘reconciliation of the people of France’, it proved to be an odd affair -more a military parade evoking threat than a historic tableau celebrating fourteen centuries of a nation. Each department of France was allowed to send a certain number of soldiers, lieutenants, marshals and police; each battalion so many leaders. The Swiss Guard, their numbers small, was allowed to send most of their men, the navy its representatives. The evening before the celebrations, the King inspected soldiers from every division at the Tuileries, while the Queen introduced the soldiers to the Children of France.

  According to an account by the Queen’s childhood friend, Joseph Weber, that same day a particularly unwelcome guest presented himself at the Tuileries. Despite General Lafayette’s warning to him not to return, the Duc d’Orléans had crept back into France. Monsieur de Simolin, ambassador to France from Russia, was so disgusted he dashed off a letter to the Empress informing her that although the King had not given permission, Orleans had had the audacity to travel to Paris. The Queen received him with good grace, however, which stunned him. The Duchesse de Tourzel wrote that the discomfited Duke could only mumble bits of conversation in her presence. The following day, when the Duc d’Orléans attended the Fête de la Fédération he heard cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’, and realized that his cousin, the King, although humbled, was not yet vanquished.

  The delegates and soldiers gathered at four o’clock in the morning at the site of the old Bastille. They proceeded across the right bank of the Seine to the neighborhood of the Champs-Élysées where a bridge of boats spanned the river. The procession made its way to the Champ de Mars, where a few days before over 3,000 workers had constructed an amphitheater around the sides of the arena. The seating proved insufficient for the nearly 600,000 people who had come from all over France to observe their military leaders, the clergy and their political representatives swear an oath of allegiance to the King and the country’s brand new constitution. Those who did not arrive at the Champ de Mars before dawn were left to line the streets of Paris where they stood in the pouring rain for the entire day. Twelve hundred musicians filled the air with patriotic songs and military marches. The royal family appeared at noon and assembled on the balcony of the military school, which had been festooned with fabrics to create an enormous tent. Although thrones had been provided, for most of the day the King, Queen, Marie-Thérèse and the little Dauphin – dressed in his National Guard uniform – remained standing, stirred from their seats by the powerful performances that evoked equally powerful emotions.

  In the center of the circus rose the ‘Altar of the Fatherland’ where at four in the afternoon Talleyrand, in his role as the Bishop of Autun, led Mass and blessed the eighty-three banners that flew, one for each of the new departments of France. As he did so the sun came out. With General Lafayette on his white horse at the head of the National Guard, the oath was sworn, swords were raised aloft, and the Queen elevated her son in her arms to the crowd. She too affirmed the oath and when the crowds returned with ‘Vive le Dauphin!’ the little boy smiled and waved to the multitude. Shortly afterwards the rain started again, and the Queen wrapped her son in a shawl. Many who had doubted the Queen’s sincerity saw this tender and motherly gesture as proof that she was in fact genuine. Marie Antoinette felt the crowd’s shift in sentiment and for a moment felt reassured.

  The celebrations went on for days. The royal family rode in an open calèche to inspect the troops around the Étoile. Cheered by the enthusiastic reception, the King told the officers that he would visit each and every one of their provinces. Although the King was not able to keep his promise, his daughter would not forget the idea and would later use it as a brilliant public relations move. She would also never forget that, although it was General Lafayette who was slated to be the center of attention, it was her father upon whom all eyes gazed. Most people had never seen their King before; they wanted to see him and touch him. According to the newspaper and eyewitness accounts, the masses were simply dazzled by his presence and many were overcome with emotion.

  After the fourteenth the royal family went back to Saint-Cloud to sit out the rest of the summer. On October 30, they begrudgingly returned to the Tuileries to find themselves once more confined to the battleground of Paris, where the political situation had grown worse. Two days before the Fête de la Federation in July, the National Assembly had passed a significant and inflammatory law, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which placed all clerics living in France under the authority of the new French government, forcing its priests to take an oath of loyalty to the constitutional government of France and forbidding any foreign sovereignty over religion in France. This law immediately split papists and secularists – the King squarely on the side of the former. The streets of Paris filled with crowds who burned effigies of the Pope, and anyone in clerical garb was attacked. As the pressure mounted to sign the decree, Louis eventually gave in. In response to the order that eradicated papal power in France, the Pope retaliated with his own dictum that any priest who complied with the law would be suspended from his parish. Even the Americans living in Paris, proud of their own new government founded on the basis of the separation of Church and State, expressed shock at the violence perpetrated against priests ostensibly in the name of democracy.

  That winter, pamphlets appeared all over France accusing the Queen of adultery and questioning the legitimacy of the five-year-old Dauphin. The National Assembly passed a law stating that the Princes of the Blood and the two Children of France could no longer inherit the feudal lands or any other items belonging to the Crown, including property and furniture. The Queen was accused of having slept with everyone from her brother-in-law to General Lafayette, and the reappearance of another enemy in Paris, the infamous Madame de la Motte, perpetrator of the diamond necklace swindle, fuelled even more insidious lies about the Queen.

  After the New Year, the King’s two elderly aunts, living at the Château de Bellevue just outside Paris, decided that all of the commotion was too much for them and that they wished to leave France. In early 1791, the National Assembly met to debate the future of the King’s aunts. The ladies were initially given permission to leave the country but shortly after their departure on February 19, while their home was being ransacked, they were arrested at Arnay-le-Duc and detained for days while the Assembly once again discussed their future. The debate went on for days and was so intense that General de Menou joked that all of Europe held their breath to see if two old ladies were going to go to church in Paris or Rome. Finally, it was agreed that although the Assembly had the power to refuse their release, it did not want blood on its hands should some harm befall the women; King Louis XV’s aged daughters were thus freed and permitted to leave the country.

  The Jacobins had been gathering momentum in the Assembly and were becoming intoxicated with their newfound power. On March 22, 1791, the Assembly issued a diktat stating that the Queen would no longer have parental rights over the Dauphin and the State was to be his regent. On March 28, fearing civil war, the Assembly decreed that the King could not venture more than 50 miles beyond Paris. In early April, the Queen received word of the death of her ally and collaborator, the Marquis de Mirabeau, whose hard-living had finally caught up with him. At noon on April 18, Holy Monday, the royal family boarded a carriage in eager anticipation of a prearranged two-week break at Saint-Cloud. As the coach approached the gates to exit the palace, the National Guard blocked their path and bolted the doors shut. For Louis, who had faced the events of the past two years with patience and dignity, this was the last straw.

  The Comte de Provence, who was with the party, wrote that as the dispirited group returned to the Tuileries Palace and alighted from their coach he was awestruck by the strengt
h and stoicism of his niece. As her entire family crumbled around her, the twelve-year-old Princess maintained her composure. She passed from her father to her mother to her aunts and uncle, tearful, but with a gentle smile on her lips, hugging each of them in turn and offering soft words of comfort. The Count, finally able to utter a word, stood before his niece and offered this extraordinary girl a blessing: ‘Oh, my child. May Heaven rain the happiness on you it refuses your family.’

  Chapter VIII

  A Dangerous Game

  The mutiny of the guards at the Tuileries reflected the advent of a more sinister, anti-monarchical mood in the capital. The events of Holy Monday had revealed just how vulnerable the royal family was without their advocate, Mirabeau, and the King at last accepted that his family was in grave danger and that they must leave Paris, though he still had no desire to abandon France.

  Marie Antoinette, however, had long been convinced of the need to get out of France altogether. Unbeknown to her husband, she had been formulating detailed escape plans with the complicity of her brother, Emperor Leopold II, Comte Mercy, Comte Fersen, and a French General, the Marquis de Bouillé. The previous November the Queen had contacted de Bouillé, commander of the Metz region, to ask for help. In late December 1790, Fersen had commissioned a berlin for a ‘Madame de Korff’ and obtained false passports for the royal family and their immediate staff. Before any departure, the Queen needed to ensure that her brother, Leopold, would provide money, soldiers and protection. To that end, Mercy, back again in Brussels, facilitated the depositing of money from Leopold to Marie Antoinette in England and Belgium. As early as February 3, 1791, the Queen wrote Mercy that an escape plan was now under way: the royal family would leave in the evening and head in an easterly direction toward Montmédy. Although the Queen had voluntarily returned the crown jewels to the Assembly along with the Mazarin diamonds, some rose-cut diamonds and a priceless string of pearls brought to France by Anne of Austria – which the Queen nonetheless considered French national property – she sent some of her personal diamonds to Mercy with instructions that if she did not survive the jewelry should be given to her daughter, Marie-Thérèse.

  Inside the Tuileries the Queen had the loyal assistance of her lady-in-waiting, Madame Campan. In March, Campan recalled that the Queen told Campan to have an unusually large quantity of children’s clothing made, presumably for the royal family’s life in exile. Campan, afraid that the sudden and rather large quantity of clothing would attract attention, commented to Marie Antoinette that the Queen of France could buy her linen and gowns anywhere she wanted. The Queen persisted and Madame Campan, rightly convinced that there were spies at the Tuileries, nonetheless proceeded at great risk to fulfill every command issued to her. She used her own son as a model for the Dauphin’s clothes and a niece for Madame Royale’s. Once complete, the wardrobes were dispatched to a Madame Cardon, now drawn into the conspiracy. Cardon, one of Madame Campan’s aunts, was a widow who lived in Arras and who owned property in Austrian Flanders, which she would visit from time to time. Should she decide to visit her own estates, she would have aroused little suspicion. Campan’s aunt was now ready to depart at a moment’s notice.

  In early May 1791, the Queen wrote to her brother-in-law, the Comte d’Artois, poised for battle along with his German and émigré allies along the eastern frontier, that he should halt all plans of attack on France until the royal family reached safety. The King was only made aware of the escape plan in late May, when he was required to send the French General, the Marquis de Bouillé, 1 million livres worth of promissory notes for the General’s army. While frantic letters arrived at the Hofburg from the Queen of France to her brother, the Emperor, Louis and Marie Antoinette continued to behave as if they were resigned to whatever outcome the people determined.

  On May 30, as Madame Campan finished her duties for the Queen and was about to begin a vacation in Auvergne, Marie Antoinette confided to her that the royal family would depart between June 15 and 20, when Campan was not on duty. The Queen told Campan that she could only take one woman with her and, as it was imperative that no one had advance warning or could be accused of complicity, that servant would be whoever was on duty at the time. Marie Antoinette instructed Campan to head for Lyon the moment she heard that the royal family had escaped and that the Queen would send for her from there. Before she left, Campan notified Madame Cardon to send the children’s clothing to Brussels immediately. Campan told the Queen that she was worried that the number of people aware of the royal family’s imminent departure was growing and that not all of these people could be trusted. It was true: there was a growing list of foreign ambassadors at the various courts of Europe who had learned that an escape plan had been hatched. General de Bouillé, who waited in Montmédy with 15,000 men and 4,800 horses, was hardly inconspicuous, and Léonard, the Queen’s hairdresser, who aimed to meet up with his royal patron once clear of Paris, was known to enjoy gossip and often told many of his client’s secrets.

  At the beginning of June, the Queen’s parfumier, Jean-Louis Fargeon, received a note asking him to come immediately to the Tuileries but to enter by the side door at the Pavillon de Flore. Fargeon duly arrived and was surprised when the Queen placed an extraordinarily large order of her favorite scents and pomades. Fargeon quickly realized the reason. Madame de Tourzel also learned of the secret plan. In February the Queen had told Comte Mercy that she intended to take Madame de Tourzel with the family on their flight of escape, but then had a change of heart. According to Madame de Tourzel, one morning the Queen suggested to the governess that she ought to travel to Plombières to take the waters there. The Queen then whispered that the royal family was about to leave Paris, but she felt that Madame de Tourzel was too old to withstand such an adventure. Madame de Tourzel declined, refusing to leave the children, though she did send her daughter Pauline to stay with cousins in the country. The elderly Madame de Mackau, also informed, took refuge at a convent.

  The intention was that the family would leave in one carriage on the night of June 19. However, Madame de Rochereuil, a chambermaid in the service of the Dauphin and one of Lafayette’s spies, went on duty that night, so the royal family waited one extra day. Unfortunately, that day was the longest of the year; the evening, the shortest.

  It seems that very few people who were close to the royal family did not know of the escape plan. One of those was Ernestine, who was sent to the country on Monday morning, June 20, 1791, to visit Monsieur de Lambriquet, her ‘father’. The Queen’s friend, the Comtesse d’Ossun, received a last-minute letter on that Monday. In it, the Queen apologized for not warning the Countess, as she knew that it would be dangerous for anyone to have been implicated in the plot. The other two kept in the dark were the Queen’s own children. On the same Monday, the 20th, Marie-Thérèse noticed that her parents seemed agitated, but she did not know why. At five o’clock in the afternoon the Queen took the children for a very public walk in the Tivoli Gardens (located at the site which is today the Gare Saint-Lazare). Owned by financier Monsieur Boutin, the beautiful gardens, designed after the spectacular Villa d’Este’s Renaissance paradise in Tivoli near Rome, were commonly referred to as the ‘Folie-Boutin’. While Marie Antoinette performed as if she had not a care in the world, she whispered to her daughter that things were going to happen, and they might be separated for a while, but that Marie-Thérèse was not to be uneasy. Although Marie-Thérèse had only a limited understanding of this cryptic message, she knew by now to trust her mother.

  On returning to the Tuileries the Queen maintained the pretense and informed the commander of her guards that she would be going out the following day and would require a bodyguard. Meanwhile, Madame de Tourzel, following the Queen’s lead ‘to throw my own people off the scent of departure’, told her own maid that she wanted a bath drawn for her the next day. The evening of the 20th appeared to be very ordinary: the Comte de Provence and his wife joined the family for dinner, though at the dinner table the King w
hispered to his younger brother that they were all to depart Paris that very night. His Majesty ordered his brother to head toward Longwy and the Austrian lowlands. The Comte de Provence, who was scheduled to leave at the same time but by a different route, helped the King write a declaration to be left behind explaining the reasons for his departure. Provence and his wife took two separate carriages into exile that evening traveling, as the King had ordered, toward Longwy. The count arrived safely in the Netherlands where he would remain until events would force him to join his youngest brother, d’Artois, and his army of counter-revolutionaries in Coblenz.

  The Tuileries Palace was surrounded by over six hundred National Guards. Inside, everything appeared as usual. The Dauphin went to bed at nine; Madame Royale at ten. A few minutes after she had climbed into her bed, Marie-Thérèse was stirred by her mother. The Queen ordered the children, helped by their governess, to dress immediately. Marie-Thérèse put on a simple calico dress. The Dauphin was disguised in girl’s clothing and told that he was going to a great castle where there would be soldiers for him to play-fight with. Surveying the feminine clothing, he remarked that his apparel was clearly meant for a comedy and not for a battle. The children, accompanied by Mesdames Brunier, de Neuville and de Tourzel, made their way with the Queen to a private exit near the ground floor apartments recently vacated by the Duc de Villequier. A bodyguard smuggled into the palace by Comte Fersen, and three more men disguised as couriers, shepherded the group of women and children.

  At about 10.30, the Queen placed her children in Fersen’s hands at the Cour des Princes. Fersen, dressed as a coachman, had been waiting in the courtyard with a small carriage ready to take the royal children to safety. When she saw that she was going to leave without her mother, Marie-Thérèse started to cry, sobbing silently. Fersen later wrote of the pathos of this lovely young girl, her face bathed in tears as she boarded his carriage in the dark. He and Madame de Tourzel, who was in possession of a note signed by the King authorizing her to travel with his children, knew that they were risking their own lives in their attempt to save the royal children.