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

by Susan Nagel

  There had been multiple tales of Louis Charles’s escape and death. At the beginning of November a civil commission came to the prison, staying for twenty-four hours, to verify the fact that the boy in the cell was indeed Louis Charles. On the 8th, the Committee of Public Safety appointed a man named Gomin to join Laurent in the care of Louis Charles. Laurent introduced Gomin to Marie-Thérèse but, predictably, she refused to speak with him. Gomin, like his colleague, Laurent, and Barras before them, was shaken when he saw the little boy and he asked the commission to visit the children once more. At the end of November, another official named Delboy came to see Louis Charles. Delboy tried to speak to the boy but received no answer as Louis Charles was by now far too weak to speak. Delboy reflected on how a country that hailed fraternity could treat a child in such a cruel way: the sun was for everyone, he declared to the guards, and had the bars from the cell’s window removed. Louis Charles’s eyes lit up. ‘You would like to be outside playing with your sister?’ Delboy enquired. Turning to Laurent and Gomin, he apparently said: ‘It is not his fault if he is the son of his father … we have here no more than an unhappy little boy; so, do not be harsh with him: unhappiness is the master of all humanity, but the country is the mother of all children.’

  Louis Charles now had more light in his room and Gomin spent hours every day with the boy. When Louis Charles became feverish, Gomin petitioned the Committee to visit the boy and see his condition for themselves. Gomin and Laurent were allowed to carry the child outdoors for fresh air and, one day in late November, Marie-Thérèse caught a glimpse of her brother on his way up to the tower. Louis Charles was so sick, however, that he could not spend much time outside, and mostly remained in his cell by the fire.

  On December 19, Madame Royale’s sixteenth birthday, three commissioners, Harmand de la Meuse, Matthieu, and Reverchon came to the prison to see the royal children. Harmand de la Meuse, who published his account over twenty years later after the Bourbons had been returned to power, set himself in a very good light. He stated that after having seen the little boy, he climbed the stairs to visit Marie-Thérèse. He had been warned that she would not speak to him. It was a cold, rainy day, and the tower was particularly damp and glacial. The teenage girl wore a gray cotton toile dress, which, he noted, could not possibly keep her warm, and a tired little cap. She was knitting and seemed uneasy. He saw that her hands were swollen and nearly purple from the cold and that her fingers appeared chilblained. As she turned her head toward him, he recalled that he saw her disquiet and asked ‘Her Highness’ why, with such excessive cold, did she sit so far from the fire? Marie-Thérèse answered that the light was better where she was sitting. He told her that a fire would throw off light. She said that she had insufficient wood to keep the fire going. Harmand de la Meuse alleged that he offered to tune her piano, obtain for her clean underclothes and anything else that she desired. When he saw that she had a copy of the prayer book The Imitation of Jesus Christ and religious works, he wondered aloud if these books were enough diversion for the imprisoned teenage girl. ‘These books are precisely the ones that suit my situation,’ Marie-Thérèse is said to have replied.

  Harmand de la Meuse, who, again, published his version of this encounter when Marie-Thérèse was in a position of power, found her response ‘sublime’ and ‘edified’, adding that this young woman was suffering the most unjust captivity. He said he assured Marie-Thérèse that he would allow her to see her brother. Then, said Harmand de la Meuse, he and his colleagues left these two children – ‘of the most august family in Europe’ – in tears, adding that he would have kept his promises to Marie-Thérèse had he not been sent immediately on a mission to the Indies.

  Harmand de la Meuse’s actual report to the Committee of Public Safety in 1794, however, was far less effusive and complimentary about the royal children.2 As Harmand de la Meuse himself had written, he had been forewarned that Marie-Thérèse would not speak with him. The more truthful version of the account was surely Marie-Thérèse’s own version in which she stated that Harmand de la Meuse did not say one word to her.

  On February 23, 1795, another civil servant, named Leroux, who was an admirer of the late Robespierre, toured the prison. When he entered Marie-Thérèse’s room she completely ignored him, failed to even raise her head, and continued with her needlework. Leroux, a self-important functionary, insisted: ‘Does one not rise before the People?’ Marie-Thérèse remained mute and immobile. She would not communicate her feelings or needs to any visiting municipals. Instead she chose to record her ‘hopes’ and ‘fears’ in rhyming couplets in her private diary:

  Sans discourir, ouvrez dit-on Without discourse, ‘Open’ one says

  Je me lève mon coeur balance I wake my heart balanced

  Entre la crainte et l’espérance Between fear and hope

  Je croyais que j’allais partir I believed that I was going to leave

  De la tour j’espérais sortir The tower I hoped to depart

  The fact that these officials felt they could just visit her at any hour of the day or night distressed her:

  Fiers sans doute d’un tel exploit Proud, no doubt, of such exploits

  Contents d’avoir fait leur emploi Content to have done their work

  que pour me venir voir that come to see me

  Ils abusèrent de leur pouvoir They abuse their power

  En choisissant une heure indue In choosing an undue hour

  Pour se présenter à ma vue … To present themselves in my sight …

  Whenever there was a knock at the door her emotions rocked ‘between fear and hope’. She hoped each time for liberty, but then the doors would be slammed and bolted once again and she would return to her needlework, or her bed.

  Despite their wretched lives, the Children of France had not been forgotten. The new government saw in its treatment of them an opportunity to disassociate itself from the Terror. There was also a revival of foreign interest in the ‘Orphans of the Temple’, as they now became known, that led the republican government to see the children as useful pawns. In an attempt to portray the new regime as more humane, the republican newspaper, Courrier Universel, published a story stating that the royal children in the tower, like everybody in France, had also benefited from the coup that had deposed Robespierre. The article pointed to the improved treatment the children were receiving. Others took this ‘newfound humanity’ as a sign to step up their efforts to get the children released. The very same Mrs Atkyns who had tried to smuggle the Queen out of the Conciergerie spent a considerable amount of time and money formulating plans to kidnap the little King and his sister from the tower. Others continued to try to ensure that the children had better medical care and nutrition. François Hüe, just released after a long period of incarceration, approached the Committee of Public Safety and asked if he could move in with Louis Charles in order to care for him, but his request was refused.

  The young government of France had been at war for almost as long as it had been in existence. As early as January 1795, representatives of Franz II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Spanish King, Charles IV, began conducting negotiations with the French Foreign Minister, François Barthélemy, in Switzerland. The Spanish King, via his experienced ambassador, Domingo d’Yriarte, set forth his conditions: in order for Spain to recognize the new government of France, the royal children must be released. In addition, the son of Louis XVI was to be given Navarre, his inherited right, to govern as his own country. Although a formal treaty with Spain was greatly desired by the revolutionary government of France, they would not agree to turning over any territories. Franz II tried to offer money in exchange for the children. Another French minister in Switzerland, Théobald Jacques Justin Bacher, wrote to the Committee of Public Safety asking if he could stall for more time until he could obtain the best offer. All parties understood that the two monarchs hoped to annex lands. The Spanish King coveted the Low Navarre. Franz II had a subtler plan: if Marie-Thérèse could be brought to Vienn
a and to the altar with one of his brothers, the Emperor would have a reason to reclaim Lorraine. Throughout these negotiations both monarchs demanded and received up-to-date reports on the health and welfare of the royal children.

  Others began to ask questions as well. Journalists who dared to write of the inhumane treatment of the children were thrown in jail. Reports began to circulate that the Dauphin had been rescued or kidnapped and another boy had been placed in his cell. It was an easy story to believe as vermin, bugs, fleas and scabies now covered the boy and rendered him unrecognizable. On March 31, 1795, Laurent was replaced by a man named Etienne Lasne who now joined Gomin in guarding and caring for the ten-year-old boy and his sister. Lasne remembered Marie-Thérèse as strong and full of courage. She woke early, dressed, combed her hair, made her bed and cleaned her room as if she had been born to servitude. She was, he observed, an example of ‘resignation and will’.

  When, at last, on May 6, Dr Pierre-Joseph Desault was permitted to treat Louis Charles, the doctor reported the atrocious details of the boy’s mistreatment. A month later Dr Desault was dead, killed by a sudden mysterious illness – some believed he had been poisoned. Two further doctors, Jean-Baptiste-Eugénie Dumangin and Philippe-Jean Pelletan, came to treat Louis Charles, but to no avail. At about 2.30 in the afternoon on June 8, 1795, the ten-year-old King Louis XVII died. The cause of death was given as tuberculosis, but the child had languished and suffered from so many pernicious infections that the exact cause of death was almost irrelevant. Lasne and Gomin both witnessed the cadaver and the next day government officials came to see it as well. It took four days for the officials to announce the child’s demise to the public. The autopsy was performed by Dr Pelletan who secretly wrapped the boy’s heart in a handkerchief and took it home with him.

  The horrendous treatment of the child had taken its toll even on those who had had a hand in the cruelty. Some could no longer bear the responsibility for their own participation in the unconscionable torment of a child. One woman, a Madame Tison, who worked in the jail alongside her husband, suffered a mental breakdown and for years thereafter insisted that she had helped the Dauphin escape. Over twenty years after the boy’s death, another woman, Madame Simon, who had assisted her husband in the torture of Louis XVII, insisted that Louis Charles had visited her in her hospital room. Haunted by memories, some later offered deathbed confessions. With the passage of time the conspirators in torture would one by one offer up shriven apologies, their tales re-igniting passionate interest in the disappearance of the boy King. Some cried that he had been poisoned, but Pelletan, the doctor who performed the autopsy, denied this. Later, when Marie-Thérèse learned of her brother’s death, she confronted such rumors by stating that the only poison that killed her brother was the brutality of his captors.

  While all of Europe learned the pitiable details of the little boy’s death, his own sister remained completely ignorant. On June 16, French émigrés in Germany declared the Comte de Provence ‘King Louis XVIII of France’, and a week later in Verona, Provence accepted the crown in exile.

  Meanwhile, a group of citizens from the town of Orléans, so horrified by news of the boy’s demise, appeared before the Convention and made a touching and impassioned plea for the deliverance of the ‘orphan girl’ from the Temple Prison. The officials ignored their request; but it was becoming clear that there was growing attention focused on Marie-Thérèse and her plight and that this was causing the populace to pity her. It was essential that the French people did not learn the details of Marie-Thérèse’s incarceration and the Convention determined to get her out of the country. On June 30, 1795, the republican government agreed in principle to releasing the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette to her Habsburg family in Vienna in exchange for nine French prisoners of war. Among the prisoners requested was Drouet, the man responsible for capturing the royal family in Varennes.

  The Committee for Public Safety decreed that it would place a female companion with Marie-Thérèse. Madame Hüe, Madame de Tourzel, Pauline de Tourzel and Madame de Frémonville, who had been in service to the late Queen, all stepped forward to ask for the position. Instead the Committee chose a woman named Madeleine-Élisabeth-Renée-Hilaire Bocquet de Chanterenne, the thirty-year-old wife of a police department administrator and daughter of an Alsatian shipowner who had lost his money before the Revolution. Renée, although provincial, was literate and well educated. She also spoke some Italian and English, had studied history, geography, music, drawing, and was an adept needlewoman. She was pretty and blonde, and considered intelligent and sensible.

  When Madame de Chanterenne arrived at the tower, Marie-Thérèse decided to try to speak to the woman. The teenager had barely spoken for over a year and at first found it hard to summon a noise, but on trying a second time managed to ask in a scratchy and quavering voice if her new guardian had news of her family. Madame de Chanterenne had been ordered, like the others, to say nothing, and told the girl that as she had just arrived in Paris she was uninformed.

  Madame de Chanterenne pitied Marie-Thérèse and saw that she had little to occupy her, so she obtained new books, clothing, materials for drawing and writing, knitting and needlework, and resumed her lessons, spending hours every day with the teenager. To help the girl regain her voice, she requested that Marie-Thérèse read aloud. She was also pained that she could not divulge the news that Marie-Thérèse so urgently needed to know.

  Early in July, Madame de Chanterenne received permission to take Marie-Thérèse into the Temple Prison’s gardens, her first chance to breathe fresh air in years. Marie-Thérèse was also delighted that her brother’s dog, Coco, a red mixed-breed spaniel, was able to join her. And when the guards gave her a baby goat as a pet, she began to smile again.

  As soon as word got out that Marie-Thérèse had been seen walking in the prison gardens, many came to catch a glimpse of the Princess who had been locked in the tower for over three years. In that time she had changed from an adolescent girl of thirteen to a young woman of nearly seventeen years of age. Her father’s loyal valet, Hüe, rented an apartment in a nearby building called La Rotonde. From there he could watch the Princess on her promenades and sang songs loudly from his apartment in the hope that she could hear them. Marie-Thérèse would have recognized their romantic lyrics: ‘Young, unfortunate one … soon the doors will open.’ He also brought a Mademoiselle Brévannes to sing and play songs including ‘The Young Prisoner’, with Madame Hüe accompanying on the harp. Monsieur Hüe, one of the very few people mentioned by name in King Louis XVI’s last will and testament, signaled to Marie-Thérèse using their old secret code that he had received a letter from her uncle, the new King, Louis XVIII.

  Others, such as Madame de La Briche, came to watch the teenage prisoner. She recalled spying Marie-Thérèse, dressed in white with a fichu tied low around her head, accompanied by her female guardian and the little red dog. Madame de La Briche observed that Marie-Thérèse appeared taller than she actually was because she carried her head high, like her late mother.

  Soon the rue de Beaujolais on the southeastern side of the Temple complex near the gardens was filled with spectators at open windows. Marie-Thérèse heard the music and songs being played for her and no longer felt abandoned. One artist set up a telescope and sketched her in the courtyard, while another, Jean Philippe Guy Le Gentil, the Marquis de Paroy, painted the Princess drawing in the garden with her eyes turned toward the tower. Paroy gave the portrait to Madame de Tourzel, who had been repeatedly asking officials for permission to visit her former charge, to give to Marie-Thérèse as a present in case she should be granted her request. The Comte d’Allonville paid a great deal of money to rent a room on the rue de la Corderie, which bordered the entire southern garden walk, so that he, too, could watch the Princess. Although there were many who saw Marie-Thérèse in the garden at the Temple Prison in 1795, later, when rumors circulated that she had switched places with an impostor, those who had seen her from afar coul
d provide only imprecise descriptions.

  There was also, as would be expected, interest expressed from fortune seekers. One day a woman arrived at the Temple Prison claiming to be one ‘Stéphanie Louise de Bourbon-Conti’, the illegitimate daughter of the Prince de Conti and the Duchesse de Mazarin, and therefore Marie-Thérèse’s cousin. Although this alleged Bourbon princess had repeatedly made this claim in public, Marie-Thérèse had no idea who the woman was and refused to meet with her. The woman was found to be one Marie Mornand, who later died in an institution for the insane.

  On July 30, the Holy Roman Emperor agreed to the terms offered by the French republican government. He would trade French prisoners of war in exchange for his cousin, Marie-Thérèse. His aunt and mother-in-law, Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, had grown tired of the wrangling and knew that Franz had a political motive in rescuing the Orphan of the Temple. She wrote to him stating that she wanted custody of her niece, that she, in contrast, had no political agenda and that she only wanted to raise her dead sister’s child as her own. On August 11, the Queen of Naples reiterated her sentiments to her daughter in Vienna, and suggested it would be a good idea if Marie-Thérèse married her cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême, eldest son of the Comte d’Artois, and she offered them both the hospitality of the Neapolitan court. The Queen of Naples also wrote to her imprisoned niece offering to be her loving mother. Marie-Thérèse replied saying simply: ‘My mother had often spoken of you, she loved you more than all her other sisters.’3

  All summer long French ministers Barthélemy and Bacher remained in Basel negotiating the finer points of the exchange with the Austrian Foreign Minister Degelmann. Franz II insisted that all protocol was to be observed toward the daughter of the late King. This would be no simple matter. There had to be complete agreement on who would accompany her out of France, how the exchange would take place, and where this would happen. Louis XVIII, aware of the exchange, mobilized. He sent letters to the Austrian Emperor stating that the minute his niece was off French soil, he wanted her. He sent his cousin the Prince de Condé and his army closer to the border, and notes to royalists in Paris to pass on loving words to Marie-Thérèse, reassuring her that she would soon be free and that he would act as her new father.