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

by Susan Nagel

  Degelmann was a shrewd diplomat. Although he and the Austrian court had had spies in Paris and had been fully aware that Madame de Tourzel was not to accompany Marie-Thérèse to Vienna, Degelmann feigned ignorance and lodged a complaint to Bacher stating that the Emperor expected to see de Tourzel among the Princess’s party. Despite the Austrians’ protests that the French were not participating in their agreement in good faith, the prisoners were released and subsequently dined at the home of the French ambassador. Bacher, who was responsible for escorting the group of prisoners back to France, concluded his own business. He gave Méchin his discharge papers stating that the man had fulfilled his duties; he received a certificate from the Prince de Gavre in which the Prince testified that he had received the daughter of the last King of France. Marie-Thérèse, kept far apart from the revolutionary prisoners of war, had the opportunity to say goodbye to those who had accompanied her thus far. The Austrians refused to allow any other French émigrés permission to meet with Marie-Thérèse for fear of a kidnapping plot.

  The official handover complete, Marie-Thérèse, under the protection of His Imperial Majesty, Franz II, departed into the night toward Rhein-felden. To protect her from the crowds (among whom was one Herr Fesch, Napoleon Bonaparte’s uncle), the Austrian Emperor had dispatched a cavalry unit and a Major Kolb to remain by the Princess’s window. The entire party headed east, away from France, along the Rhine toward Vienna with strict instructions not to trespass on foreign territory. Both Bacher and Méchin wrote detailed accounts of the exchange. Whereas Bacher was an experienced diplomat with the confidence to pepper his report with a certain flavor, Méchin, whom Marie-Thérèse had described as afraid of his own shadow, had neither the self-assurance nor the skill to report anything other than the bare facts.3 Both men attested to the fact that Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, the daughter of the late King of France, was now in the possession of the Austrian government.

  The carriage carrying Marie-Thérèse made haste until, late into the night, it reached Laufenburg. On the morning of December 27, Marie-Thérèse awoke for the first time in her life not on French soil. She then attended a simple Mass in her parents’ honor, the first time she had been in a church in over three years. After the service, she and her party resumed the journey east, still surrounded by Austrian cavalry. In Füssen, Marie-Thérèse stopped to visit her father’s aunt and uncle, the Elector of Treves and his sister, Princess Cunegonde of Saxe, with whom she entrusted a letter for her own uncle, King Louis XVIII. In the letter, she wrote that his will would be her own, and that whatever he wished her to do she would do gladly. She sent him her deepest affection and begged the King to send her instructions. She again asked him to pardon the French people. She had clearly forgotten neither her manners nor her education during her incarceration. Although the King’s elderly aunt and uncle were, in fact, quite aloof with her, Marie-Thérèse, suspecting that they would later read her letter, flattered her hosts and assured her uncle that the elderly brother and sister were treating her with every kindness. She also sent every compliment to the King from his subject, Madame de Soucy, even though she had thoroughly tired of the woman.

  Along the road, Hüe spotted Condé’s soldiers. On January 2,1796, the cortège arrived in Innsbruck and stayed for two days to meet with Her Imperial Highness, the Archduchess Maria Elisabeth, a sister of the late Queen Marie Antoinette. Marie-Thérèse found the infirm and severe old abbess difficult and ‘repulsive’. She was so uncomfortable in the presence of Maria Elisabeth that she even considered agreeing to marry the Archduke Karl just to be left alone. In the meantime, King Louis XVIII had placed his own emissaries in Innsbruck, among them the Prince de Condé and the Comte d’Avaray, his closest minister. The Prince de Gavre, however, would not permit any of the French émigrés to approach Marie-Thérèse.

  As they neared Vienna, in the town of Wels, Marie-Thérèse was finally able to see a familiar face. The ever-faithful and persistent valet Jean-Baptiste Cléry had made his own way to the town to wait for the Princess. She was overjoyed to see him, and she asked him to deliver a note she had written to her uncle. Cléry informed Marie-Thérèse that the exiled King’s emissaries had been trying to reach her but that they had been denied access to her. She then wrote another note to her uncle, expressing her growing annoyance with what she now understood as the Emperor’s deliberate attempt to keep her away from any French émigrés. She stressed to her uncle that she in no way consented to this plan: ‘I would prefer to be unhappy with my family as they are than to be at the court of a prince who is an enemy to my family and my country.’ Again, concerned that her other letters might not have reached His Majesty, she reiterated her plea that he forgive the people of France and asked for forgiveness for herself in advance. ‘Sire, I will arrive in Vienna where I will await orders from Your Majesty. But I sense, although I have a great desire to send news, I fear that I will not be able to write often, as I will be closely observed.’ She reassured her uncle that although the Emperor wanted her to marry his brother, she would defy neither her parents’ wishes nor those of her King: ‘My position is very difficult and delicate, but I have confidence in the God who has rescued me and brought me out of so many dangers.’

  In Verona, the exiled French King received both the letter sent via Cunegonde of Saxe and the one hand-delivered by Cléry. Louis read the notes with his minister, d’Avaray, and both were impressed by Marie-Thérèse’s courage and steadfastness. The King, determined to maintain control over his niece, answered her letters and dispatched Cléry to Vienna to deliver his answers. Louis, fully aware that these letters might not reach his niece, devised a ploy to facilitate their delivery. Cléry should seek a public audience with the Holy Roman Emperor and declare to all present that he had letters in his possession for Marie-Thérèse from her uncle. Louis calculated that Franz, hailed by his subjects as well as the other monarchs of Europe as the magnanimous savior of the poor Orphan of the Temple Prison, would not want to appear otherwise and would allow the Princess the letters.

  Louis remained fearful that Marie-Thérèse, just seventeen and without anyone to advise and protect her, would submit to Franz’s will and ruin his own plans. In the notes that Cléry carried, Louis responded to his niece’s pleas for the people of France. He told her that although peace was in his heart, it was not in his hands. He advised Marie-Thérèse to tell anyone who tried to marry her to Archduke Karl that she must state that, before their unfortunate deaths, her parents had promised her to another. Lastly, understanding that although she might be wise beyond her years in many ways, she would be innocent in the ways of romance, he began to wage a campaign to convince Marie-Thérèse that his nephew, the Duc d’Angoulême, was pining for her. Emperor Franz was equally certain that the anemic d’Angoulême would pale in her eyes once she saw the dashing Archduke Karl.

  Chapter XIII

  Vienna

  On January 9, 1796, a fair-haired girl, hailed as Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France, traveled the Route La Dauphine, the road taken by the late Queen Marie Antoinette upon her departure from Vienna twenty-six years previously to the Hofburg Palace. Although members of the imperial family had seen paintings of the girl when she was younger, it was the first time that the Austrian court had ever laid eyes on her in person. This teenager, presumed to be the only surviving child of the late King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, would live in private royal apartments befitting a child of an Austrian Archduchess and a King of France.

  Not long after the gates of the Hofburg had been closed behind her, Marie-Thérèse sensed that she might have escaped one prison for another. She was met by her first cousin, Franz II, and his wife, Maria Theresa of Sicily, another first cousin. The two women disliked each other from the start. Marie-Thérèse found her cold and believed that the Sicilian-born Princess thought herself superior to the daughter of the King of France, who ought to be grateful for her husband’s handouts. The Emperor, for his part, anticipated being rewarded for rescuing M
arie-Thérèse from her French captors. He and his minister, Thugut, had assumed that Marie-Thérèse would wish to exact revenge on the people of France and had prepared a document for her to sign on her arrival. The document asserted her hereditary rights to Burgundy, Brittany, Lorraine, Alsace and Franche-Comté – pivotal territories for both the Holy Roman Empire and France. However, the fragile-looking teenager read it and stubbornly declared that she would not sign it.

  Hours later, Marie-Thérèse wrote to her uncle assuring him that she, a subject of His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France, would obey his command only. She held onto the note until she could be sure of its delivery by hand to him in Verona.

  The next morning, January 10, Joseph Weber, a childhood friend of Marie Antoinette who had followed the late Queen to France to serve her, was allowed to visit Marie-Thérèse at the Hofburg. Weber reflected that he had been transported there by a ‘sensation of overwhelming emotion’. Thrilled to see her again, he described Marie-Thérèse as having the ‘grace of Marie Antoinette, and the goodness of Louis XVI’. He came away from the meeting feeling as though he had ‘spoken with an angel’.

  Weber was not the only one to ascribe to Marie-Thérèse a heavenly aura; the girl with the ‘celestial eyes’ was acquiring something of an iconic status across much of Europe. She was no longer simply the daughter of the late King, but an ‘angel on earth’, someone whose very survival contained some grander meaning. In Paris, people made pilgrimages to the Temple Prison to view the abandoned cell of the young woman who had slipped out of Paris mysteriously into the night. Curiosity seekers waited in queues to see the walls on which Marie-Thérèse had, using a needle, scratched her prayers and her testament to misery. Along with the solitary musings left by the Princess, visitors saw the Queen’s own wall markings. On March 27, 1793, Marie Antoinette had etched: ‘Four feet, ten … Three feet, two …’ – the height of each of her children.

  As had been the case when she was alive, fictional stories about Marie Antoinette began to creep into factual accounts. Sightseers could now step onto the balcony from which Marie Antoinette was supposed to have witnessed the mob carrying the bloody head of her friend, the Princesse de Lamballe – despite the fact that, according to Marie-Thérèse and Hüe, this incident never happened. The contemporary historian Montjoye visited the Temple Prison and witnessed people selling rings, locks of hair, and other mementos said to have belonged to the royal family. Montjoye was offered drawings claimed to have been done by Marie-Thérèse. Impressed by their professional appearance, he wondered if the Princess was that talented an artist. He showed the sketches to an expert, who explained that they had been executed in a very sophisticated manner with copperplate and could not possibly have been done by the Princess in her prison cell. Such issues seemed to matter little, however. The people were hungry for some bit of the teenage girl, real or not – souvenirs of the child who had such royal pedigree that two of Europe’s most exalted princes were contending for her hand in marriage.

  For weeks, the editors of the Gazette Nationale de France intentionally underplayed and misreported Marie-Thérèse’s journey from Paris, hoping that readers would lose interest in the story. On Monday, December 21, two days after Marie-Thérèse left Temple Prison, the Gazette reported that ‘the noise is because the daughter of Louis XVI has left the Temple … one knows that representatives from Austria have been in Fribourg for days’. Another report from Basel, dated December 26, which appeared in the Gazette on January 8, 1796, claimed to offer the curious reader ‘details on the exchange of the French deputies and the daughter of Louis XVI, scheduled for the evening of December 27th or December 28th’.1

  Journals and reports written by Directory officials also offered deliberately conflicting dates, places and times – which inadvertently stoked the public’s fascination and added to the mystique of the story. Wherever she was, the accounts agreed on one thing: along the way she had seen a boy who reminded her of her brother and this had made her cry. It was not until Marie-Thérèse was sequestered in the Hofburg that the French press finally printed a somewhat accurate account of her journey. On January 13, four days after Marie-Thérèse arrived in Vienna, the Gazette acquiesced to public desire. The article led with the return of the French prisoners, declaring it to be a great victory for the Directory. It then gave an account of the crowds of people who had come out to see the daughter of the late King during her passage to Vienna and the large quantity of soldiers that had been required to keep the peace during the proceedings in Basel.

  The inaccurate reports and newspaper articles became typical of what was to be the beginning of the mythification of the banished Princess. It was at this time that wild stories began to circulate about Marie-Thérèse, her brother, and their experiences in prison. Rumors abounded that she had been drugged, raped, and was now an imbecile. Another popular story claimed that the King’s daughter had fallen in love with a guard and had escaped on his arm, and that her place in prison was taken by a lookalike. Tales also resurfaced that royal sympathizers had removed her brother from his prison cell, substituted another very ill little boy, and that Louis Charles and Marie-Thérèse were planning to reunite in Vienna – or even America. People speculated about how and where, en route to the Hofburg, she might have switched places with another – and who was involved in the plot. Had she changed places with someone in Huningue before her arrival in Basel? Maybe it had happened in Germany? Had she escaped to America? Was she on a ship bound for the Caribbean? Fueling the fascination, a novel called Ninon appeared shortly after the Princess left Paris, and it became a sensation. The story, which would later be presented as a play in Strasbourg, a city dangerously close to enemy territory, has as its main character ‘Ninon’, the young Queen of France who changes places with a servant girl at an auberge and wears a veil to hide her identity.

  Indeed, many keen observers believed that there was something suspicious about Marie-Thérèse’s release. The English ambassador, Wickham, confessed in his report on the exchange to Foreign Minister Baron Grenville that ‘there is something so very mysterious in this whole transaction and I am so entirely destitute of real information upon the subject’. He also confirmed to Grenville that he had received a note from Burgermeister Bourcart, in which Bourcart claimed he had been party to discussions regarding a kidnap attempt by the Prince of Condé, declaring: ‘The Prince of Condé once asked me whether the Canton of Berne would give her protection in case she escaped … I afterward overheard some part of a conversation between the Comte d’Avaray and M. Degelmann in my own house here within, they talked of the possibility of carrying the princess to the Vendée.’ News of such a plot would have most certainly alarmed the British. Months earlier, in an echo of the uprising in the Vendée, about 3,000 French royalists succeeded in convincing the British to ferry them to the peninsula of Quiberon in northwest France in order to overthrow the French government. Bad weather subsequently prevented the British navy from supporting the insurrection and nearly half of the invaders were executed. No one wanted a repeat of such a tragedy.

  The disparate newspaper reports and Marie-Thérèse’s own account, delivered to Madame de Chanterenne, also offer intriguing inconsistencies. In her letter to Chanterenne, she referred to the men by their names – Gomin, Méchin, and the servant, Monsieur Baron – but she never mentioned the names of either Madame de Soucy’s son or that of de Soucy’s maid. Was it possible Marie-Thérèse was hiding something from Renée de Chanterenne? Did she omit information because she simply was unable to lie to her friend or feared compromising her with explosive information?

  According to historians, the passports issued for these two ‘unnamed’ people were for a teenage boy named ‘Pierre de Soucy’ and a woman traveling under the name of ‘Catherine de Varenne’. But Madame de Soucy did not have a son by that name (her children were: Louis Xavier, Charles Philippe, and Philippe Charles, and in December, 1795, they were twenty, nineteen and fourteen years old respectively). Mad
ame de Soucy also had two daughters. One was eleven at that time and one was the same age as Marie-Thérèse. Were the passports issued to either ‘Catherine de Varenne’ or ‘Pierre de Soucy’ fraudulent? Was ‘Pierre’, dressed in boy’s clothing, really one of Madame de Soucy’s daughters who would serve as a decoy? Or was, as some historians have posited, ‘Pierre’ really Ernestine – Marie-Thérèse’s look-alike and possible half-sister? Could ‘Catherine de Varenne’ have been a pseudonym for the late King’s putative daughter? Others claim it was the young seamstress, Mademoiselle Serini (diminutive of ‘Serenissima’ – ‘Highness’ – a code name perhaps?), who changed places with Marie-Thérèse at the hotel in Huningue moments before (and after the letters to Madame de Chanterenne had been written and dispatched) the Child of France was due to meet with the Austrians in Basel. Even the notes received by Chanterenne have been suspected of being forgeries, as some suspect that the ‘Marie-Thérèse’ who arrived in Huningue had already changed places with the real Princess, who had been spirited away even before she reached the border town.