by Susan Nagel
On August 21, shortly after the Holy Roman Emperor and the Directory had agreed to the exchange, Louis XVIII had written a note of thanks to the Austrian monarch. In the note Louis pretended that he hoped Marie-Thérèse would be sent to Rome to live with his elderly aunts. The Emperor was not fooled: he knew very well that Louis wanted nothing more than for Marie-Thérèse to marry the Duc d’Angoulême. For her part, Marie-Thérèse believed her uncle’s lie that it was her parents’ dearest wish that she should marry d’Angoulême, and she had decided that she would marry no one but him. She understood that the Emperor had made plans for her, but in her own mind she had resolved to live in Vienna only until she was allowed to go to Rome and live with her father’s aunts, or, if the people of France tired of revolution and begged the Bourbons to return, join her uncle, the exiled King of France.
The following morning, the royal group departed for Troyes where once again Carletti just missed them. This time, he had tried to interfere with their progress by taking the last of their fresh horses. Marie-Thérèse called the Tuscan ambassador ‘that villain’ and laughed when she heard a courier refer to Carletti as ‘that toile merchant’, apparently because his coach was lined with toile. The Princess’s group determined to get ahead of Carletti so that he could no longer cause any mischief. In the next town, Méchin presented his copy of official orders to the authorities and was able to get preferential treatment and fresh horses, and the party was back on the road by eleven that night. This time Carletti, still on the prowl, missed them by two hours. In a letter dated January 12, 1796, the US Minister to France and future President, James Monroe, wrote to the then Congressman James Madison that the Directory was so outraged by what they perceived to be Carletti’s aggressive and unwarranted behavior in his attempts to ‘visit the unfortunate daughter’ of Louis XVI, that the French government demanded the Italians recall him.
Early the next morning, December 21, the royal party arrived at Chaumont where they breakfasted whilst onlookers watched them through the windows of the dining room. Marie-Thérèse was gamely making her way through the large crowds toward her post chaise when a great cry of ‘God Bless You!’ penetrated the silence and once more effusive shouts filled the air. The group resumed their journey toward Fayl-Billot where they had to wait for new horses. All along the route to exile, Marie-Thérèse impressed the populace with her dignity and graciousness, just as her parents had. The little girl who had haughtily disdained her public role had turned into a young woman who understood her duty and that sense of duty would be her guiding light and motivating force for the rest of her life.
While Louis XVIII’s cousin, the Prince de Condé, and his army lined the roads of German towns along the Rhine, Marie-Thérèse headed toward the Swiss border: on to Vesoul, Ronchamp, past Frahier, through Belfort and finally, on Christmas Eve, after six days of traveling, they arrived at six o’clock at the French border town of Huningue. The other carriage, bearing Hüe, Madame de Soucy’s son and maid, Meunier, Baron and Coco the dog, had arrived there hours earlier despite the fact that it had left Paris an hour after Marie-Thérèse’s. The minute she arrived, the gates of the fortress city were locked and would not be re-opened until her departure.
The carriage pulled up at the steps of the Hotel du Corbeau (‘raven’) with its black sheet metal raven hanging ominously over the door. Marie-Thérèse made her way to the third floor, as instructed, and closed the door to room number 10 behind her. She was exhausted, but there was something she felt she must do. Remembering the words of her father’s last will and testament – to ‘forget all hate and resentment’ – she began a letter to her uncle, Louis XVIII, imploring him to forgive the French people. ‘Yes, uncle, it is she whose father, mother and aunt have been made to perish by them, who, on her knees, begs you for their grace and for peace!’ she wrote.
In another room in the auberge, a relieved Méchin promptly dispatched his own letter to Foreign Secretary Bacher in Basel:
I have just arrived this evening in Huningue with the deposit with which I am charged to deliver in Basel. I remain here and wait for the objects of exchange to arrive in Basel. Please advise me and send me your instructions immediately.
At ten o’clock that evening, Hüe called on the Princess and brought Coco with him. Although the King’s servant had seen Marie-Thérèse from a distance when she had strolled about the garden of the Temple Prison that summer, it had been three years since they had been in the same room together. At last, they were able to meet in person and speak with one another. Marie-Thérèse asked Hüe to deliver the note she had written to her uncle, and, honored to have her trust, he was overjoyed when she told him that he could read it.
The next day, Christmas Day, a crowd of curiosity seekers turned up at the inn. The Corbeau’s proprietors, François-Joseph and Anne-Marie Schultz, afraid of an onslaught that would cause damage to their hotel and harm to their esteemed guest, bolted the doors and shut all the windows. Despite these precautions, a local woman named Madame Spindler, the wife of the captain of the town’s civil engineers, disguised as a servant, bypassed security and brought a pitcher of water to the Princess’s room in a desperate attempt to see the Child of France. Later, the proprietress brought the couple’s two children, a girl and their adopted son, to meet the famous Princess. The children, seeing the commotion outside their home, thought that Marie-Thérèse must be a saint. They presented a bouquet of flowers – hard to find in winter – kissed her hand, and shyly ogled the teenager. The blond little boy, about ten years old, reminded Marie-Thérèse of her beloved Louis Charles, and she wistfully told Madame Schultz how much she would like to take the boy with her to Vienna. The innkeeper’s wife seemed genuinely distressed. Although she hesitatingly told Marie-Thérèse that she had, the night before, prayed to God that he grant all of the Princess’s wishes, and that she would be honored to fulfill any desire of her esteemed guest, she did not wish to comply with that particular request. Before she could complete her sentence, Marie-Thérèse interrupted with an apology, telling Madame Schultz how wrong it was for any child to be separated from his parents. The woman, grateful for the Princess’s understanding, asked Marie-Thérèse if she required anything else. Marie-Thérèse, who had noticed the woman’s pregnant belly, smiled and said that she would be honored if the couple would name their baby after her if it were a girl. A few months later, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte Schultz was born.
At the hotel, Marie-Thérèse and her entourage gathered in a salon where they wrote letters and talked. Marie-Thérèse wrote to Mesdames de Mackau and de Tourzel and began a very long, detailed account of her journey for Madame de Chanterenne. The Princess had met her friend Renète when she was called simply ‘Marie Capet’, and the two had a somewhat less formal and more intimate relationship than she had known with her courtiers of the ancien régime. In her note to Renète, she wrote not only of the journey’s petty annoyances, like nails in the road that caused delay, she also expressed her most intimate feelings and concerns. She told her friend how much she already missed her, and how she wished they could have traveled together to Vienna. She wrote that when her identity was discovered: ‘You could not imagine how they ran to see me. Some called me “their good lady”, others “their good princess”. Some cried with joy … how different from Paris!’ And she expressed her anguish at leaving France: ‘Everywhere I felt my pain augment as I faced leaving my compatriots who shouted a thousand vows to heaven for my happiness.’
She also offered her most private opinions on her traveling companions. She explained to Renète that the soldier Méchin was jumpy the entire time as he was convinced that they would be attacked by assassins or kidnappers and that he persisted in the charade even after the party’s true identity had been recognized, which she found tedious. Marie-Thérèse, who had never particularly liked Madame de Soucy, liked her even less in Huningue. ‘She often causes quarrels … I do not like her, she annoys me.’ Marie-Thérèse added that although she knew that Bénéze
ch liked Madame de Soucy (because her brother had joined the Revolution and now had an important post with the Directory), she hoped that the tiresome woman and her entourage – ‘her son’ and ‘her maid’, no names mentioned – would return to Paris and not accompany her to Vienna. She wrote to Renète that she was going to meet with officials that afternoon and confided that she was nervous because she had heard the rumors that she would be married within eight days to ‘her lover’, the Archduke Karl.
Méchin received a communiqué from Bacher in Basel giving details of the exchange that was to take place the day after Christmas Day. Méchin replied that the Princess had been informed and was ready to conform to the plans. Gomin added his own note to the minister asking him to forward to the Hôtel du Corbeau any correspondence addressed to him. Madame de Soucy and Marie-Thérèse both expected that Madame de Mackau may have written to them care of Gomin. As a Directory employee, Gomin was not allowed to accompany Marie-Thérèse to Vienna, and when he expressed his sadness to Marie-Thérèse that they would soon part company, she told him that before they parted she would give him a memento of their time together.
At 4.30 in the afternoon, Foreign Secretary Bacher arrived at the Corbeau. He and Marie-Thérèse discussed the trousseau, which had been prepared at great expense for the Princess.1 Marie-Thérèse declared that she would not accept the gift from the Directory and asked Bacher to find a seamstress in Basel who could make her some simple clothing. Gomin asked the minister if he would perform a small task: post a packet of letters, addressed to himself in Paris. Inside the packet were other sealed letters addressed to Mesdames de Mackau and de Tourzel, the letters written by Madame de Soucy and Marie-Thérèse. Bacher later opened the packet and reported to Foreign Minister Charles Delacroix in Paris that he had been asked to send the letters written by Madame de Soucy and the Princess. He did not confiscate the notes, however, and the letters were allowed to reach their intended recipients. Marie-Thérèse, who guessed that her letters might be intercepted, did not include her note to Madame de Chanterenne in the parcel because she trusted no one other than Gomin to deliver it in person. This note, which arrived safely, remains the only account in the Princess’s handwriting detailing her release from Temple Prison and journey to France’s borders.
Although her confident demeanor fooled many, Marie-Thérèse sent another letter to Madame de Chanterenne in which she described her inner sadness and anxieties. Calling herself ‘an unhappy expatriate’, Marie-Thérèse wrote a heartfelt goodbye to her cherished friend. She explained that at that moment she was sitting in a room with Madame de Soucy, her son, Hüe and Gomin; the two men were chatting near the doorway with ‘my dear Coco’ lying cozily asleep in the corner near the stove. She would be seeing Foreign Secretary Bacher again the next morning,
and tomorrow evening at the end of the day, at the very moment when they lock the gates [to the city], I leave for Basel where the exchange will immediately take place, and then I will straight away leave for Vienna, where perhaps I will be when you receive this letter. One speaks much about my marriage, that it will take place soon, I hope not; finally, I do not know what I say. I promise to always think fondly of you; I neither can nor do I wish to forget you. Please take care of this poor M. Gomin who is in pain about our separation … Adieu, my dear Renète, peace, peace is what I desire … May it arrive … and may I see you in Rome and not in Vienna! Adieu, good, charming, tender Renète, my beautiful lady.
Bacher returned to Basel to write a report on his meeting with the Princess for Delacroix. ‘The daughter of the last King of France arrived in Huningue without incident, as I had advised yesterday,’ he wrote. He filled the rest of the report with falsehoods that conflicted with his personal experience: the Princess’s arrival had caused little in the way of sensation in the town, he wrote, and her stay was regarded as no more than an ‘inconvenient curiosity’. Finally, he informed the Minister that a ‘detachment of cavalry’ was on its way to the hotel to escort the Princess to the border. A few days later, when the exchange had been completed and Marie-Thérèse was out of reach of the French government, Bacher expressed his admiration to Delacroix for the teenage girl. He said he realized that behind her bravado she was, in fact, just a teenage girl, uncertain about her future. He recalled a conversation that took place at the hotel between Madame de Soucy and the Princess. Marie-Thérèse asked de Soucy what she thought awaited her in Vienna. De Soucy replied that she thought the Princess would probably marry the Archduke. Marie-Thérèse reacted with incredulity: ‘But don’t you know that we are at war?’ to which Madame de Soucy replied: ‘Then you might be an angel of peace.’ Marie-Thérèse responded: ‘On that condition, I will make the sacrifice for my country.’
Bacher kept his promise to Marie-Thérèse, and on the morning of Saturday December 26, a modiste from Basel named Mademoiselle Serini arrived at the hotel. The dressmaker came bearing a selection of dresses and bonnets from which Marie-Thérèse could choose her traveling wardrobe. As Bacher had offered to pay for whatever Marie-Thérèse desired, Madame de Soucy took advantage of the situation and grabbed stockings, handkerchiefs, hats, fichus, and other sundries for herself. Marie-Thérèse spent an hour in her room with Serini, but was far less greedy.
When Marie-Thérèse was almost ready to leave, the entire Schultz family appeared at the door of her room and asked her to give them a special benediction. As they lay prostrate on the floor before her, she offered them her blessing and handed out presents – fichus to the children and a handkerchief to their mother. When Madame Schultz began to weep, Marie-Thérèse gently reminded the pregnant woman that she needed to remain calm. Each member thanked the Princess and kissed her hand.
In the afternoon, Bacher arrived to get the group on the road to Switzerland, and when Marie-Thérèse asked the diplomat if Gomin could come with them after all, he told her that it was, unfortunately, not in his power; those who were to accompany Marie-Thérèse to Vienna had already been decided on. Marie-Thérèse then turned to Gomin and said, ‘I do not know if I will see you in Basel, or if I will ever speak with you again. I want to keep my promise,’ and she handed him a memento. It was a note containing her expression of devotion to the man who had, at first, served as her captor at the Temple Prison, and who had since become her trusted friend. In it, she wrote that she would not ask Gomin to think of her because she knew that he would, and that she would always think of him. As she bid him goodbye she said: ‘Do not cry, and above all, have faith in God.’
It was dark and the gates to the city remained shut. Marie-Thérèse was ready, though unhappy, to go. Méchin led the way toward the carriage, and Bacher walked by the Princess’s side. Monsieur Schultz closed the door of the carriage and it pulled away escorted by a brigade of revolutionary dragoons. The gates of Huningue were opened. As the carriage picked up speed, so did the soldiers’ horses. This was no ordinary visitor en route to the border. Here was political currency. As her coach approached the Rhine, Marie-Thérèse declared to her companions, ‘I leave France with regret. I will never cease to regard it as my country.’ As the carriage crossed the tiny bridge that spanned the river, shouts of’ Vive la Princesse!’ filled the air. Marie-Thérèse waved at the local Swiss citizens who had lined the bridge, each holding lanterns to catch a glimpse of her. Word had spread from Huningue that the French were ‘losing an angel’ – an eerie echo of her grandmother’s words to Maria Antonia as she left Austria to become Dauphine of France.
The carriage headed not south toward Basel, but southeast toward the countryside. Both sides of the exchange were afraid that if they met in the city it might cause further commotion and jeopardize the proceedings. The Prince de Gavre and Minister Degelmann waited for Marie-Thérèse at the Villa Reber, the private home of a rich Swiss businessman. Barely a few miles beyond the bridge, the carriage stopped before high gates. Small groups of people waited near the house to see Her Highness, among them the persistent Carletti, who had arrived in Basel that afternoon,
an officer of the Prince de Condé, and spies who were surveying the scene for the English ambassador Wickham. The local Burgermeister, a Monsieur Bourcart, kept a diary of the unusual goings-on.
The gates opened and the carriage proceeded toward the Villa Reber. The path was muddy and Bacher proposed that he obtain a chair to carry the Princess to the door. Marie-Thérèse declined, saying that it was not necessary. Those who watched her alight at the villa wrote of an inhumanly pale, malnourished little waif who looked sad and exhausted; she appeared to have suffered from some kind of trauma as her eyes were red-rimmed and she startled very easily.
It was about seven o’clock in the evening when the Child of France walked up the path toward the waiting Prince de Gavre. The Prince introduced himself as the emissary of her cousin, the Emperor, and then introduced the Austrian minister Degelmann. Marie-Thérèse testified to the two men that she was Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France at which point Bacher stated with great formality to the two men: ‘I am charged with placing in your hands Madame of France.’ Maintaining her composure, Marie-Thérèse told Bacher, ‘Monsieur, I will never forget that I am French.’ Moved, the Prince de Gavre softly told her: ‘Madame, I am charged to receive Your Royal Highness to conduct you to His Imperial Majesty who is impatient to see you, to embrace you, and to give you, Madame, his marks of tenderness and his best wishes.’ She responded that she was aware of His Imperial Majesty’s kindness and that the same blood ran through each of their veins.
At the villa, Marie-Thérèse ate some bread, drank some water tinged with wine and rested until nearly nine o’clock. Bacher and Degelmann, meanwhile, ironed out their agreement. Monsieur Hüe advised Marie-Thérèse that the trunks containing the trousseau prepared for her had arrived should she decide to now accept the wardrobe.2 Once again, she declined. Despite the fact that Bacher reported to Delacroix that the young girl clearly did not want any gifts from the revolutionary government, the Directory shrugged off her refusal, excusing it as a decision made for her by the Austrians. Traditionally, a princess who was to go to a foreign country and marry would be symbolically disrobed and transformed into the identity of her new nation, just as Marie Antoinette had been when she arrived in France in 1770. The Directory assumed that the Austrians were preparing Marie-Thérèse to become Austrian, and that the choice to refuse the extensive trousseau was made not by Marie-Thérèse herself, who was in desperate need of fresh clothing, but by the Austrian dignitaries on behalf of the teenager.