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

by Susan Nagel

  Whatever the suspicions, the young woman who arrived at the Hofburg that January displayed gumption. She quickly stunned the Emperor and his advisors with her tenacity, and Franz soon realized that if he were to gain any influence over the girl he would have to break her resolve. His first tactic was to pry the Princess loose from all French influences. He allowed her unlimited access to her Austrian imperial family, while banning Madame de Soucy, Monsiuer Hüe and Cléry from the Hofburg. Loyal and persistent, however, they remained in Vienna and all managed to slip letters to her, and she found ways to reply.

  The Emperor proceeded on his course and Marie-Thérèse on hers. As she informed Madame de Soucy, in her first two weeks at the Hofburg she had been in the company of Archduke Karl on a number of occasions; however, she reassured her uncle, she would not be swayed from her desire to marry d’Angoulême. Marie-Thérèse instructed de Soucy to write to Louis XVIII and tell him that although she thought the Austrian Archduke Karl was amiable, she found him ‘ugly’. On January 20, she wrote to her cousin, the Prince de Condé:

  I was extremely touched and flattered by your letter … I am filled with pleasure to have a Cousin so gloriously wearing the name of Bourbon, a name so virtuous that history will speak of it always; your love for God and for your King makes you admired everywhere … I have had the pleasure of seeing some of your gentlemen that gave me great pleasure because I will always be happy seeing Frenchmen so attached to their Duty … I admire and envy very much your role … I hope that Messieurs the Ducs de Bourbon [the Prince de Condé’s son] and d’Enghien [de Condé’s grandson] are well … someone told me that the Princess Louise [de Condé’s daughter] is in Piedmont … she must be very unhappy to be separated from her father for such a long time … Your affectionate cousin.

  Denied the right to write letters for so long, Marie-Thérèse found paper and pen a privilege and took full advantage of the luxury. She wrote to her family in Naples, her uncle in Verona, a cousin in Milan, her cousins at the German front, her aunts in Rome, and a very touching letter to her Aunt Clothilde, the Princess of Piedmont, who sent her a portrait of Marie-Thérèse’s beloved late aunt, Madame Elisabeth. And out of sheer politeness she corresponded with Archduchess Elisabeth, the aunt she had found repugnant when she had stopped in Innsbruck. On January 21, the Archduchess wrote to Marie-Thérèse that she had received two letters from her and that she was very happy to hear that her niece had been welcomed with open arms by her Austrian family.

  Copies of Marie-Thérèse’s letters flurried around Europe offering tidbits of news to the Princess’s anxious relatives. However, the only physical contact she had with a French man or woman that month was momentary and with someone she secretly despised. It was with Mon-seigneur de la Fare, the Bishop of Nancy – the priest who had excoriated her mother at the opening prayers of the 1789 États-Généraux. The Bishop, who had fled the new secular France, was now the leader of the French émigré community in Vienna. On January 21, Marie-Thérèse, dressed incognito, attended a Mass marking the third anniversary of her father’s death. She had come to the church armed with letters and a miniature portrait of herself, painted by Fuger, in case she was able to make contact with any senior French émigrés. Putting to one side her dislike for the man, she slipped into de la Fare’s hand a letter addressed to her uncle, Louis XVIII, along with the miniature and the letter to the Prince de Condé. The Bishop, anticipating that Marie-Thérèse might try to attend the Mass, had also come forearmed – with letters from her uncle, another from the Prince de Condé, and a note from her cousin, the Comte d’Artois’s younger son, the Duc de Berry. While de Berry’s letter showered her with gallantries, she heard nothing from his brother, the Duc d’Angoulême – the man she was supposed to marry.

  Marie-Thérèse, who had been deprived of news and company for over three years, was ecstatic to hear from her family. She responded to the flood of letters, imploring Bishop de la Fare to ensure their safe delivery. On January 22, she wrote excitedly to her childhood playmate, the Duc de Berry, telling him to refrain from paying homage to her as she was nothing more than his cousin, imploring him: ‘Please write to me often and without ceremony.’ On February 5, de Berry responded:

  I received yesterday your charming letter of January 22nd. It is impossible to express to you the pleasure it gave me: it was the only consolation that I could receive not having permission to see you. I assure you that nothing gave me more pain than the Prince de Gavre’s refusal.

  On February 3, the Gazette Nationale de France carried an inflammatory article claiming that Marie-Thérèse was now an official member of the Austrian court and that as part of the process of being ‘Austrified’, she now wore the formal court dress of the Austrians. The truth, however, was very different. To the Emperor’s dismay, Marie-Thérèse had refused to wear anything other than black mourning dress. From the moment of her arrival at the Hofburg, she had been treated as an esteemed member of the family: she was invited to attend court functions and included in all family dinners and parties. And she arrived at them all dressed in mourning for her parents, her brother, and for the death of the ancien régime.

  By the end of January, Franz was losing patience with what he saw as Marie-Thérèse’s uncooperativeness. He had imagined her at his side, smiling, grateful and engaged to Archduke Karl. Suspecting that the French coterie was advocating subversion, the Emperor expelled her entire French entourage from his realm. Madame de Soucy was given a final audience with the Emperor before her departure, during which he presented her with a parting ‘tip’ of 1,500 ducats. De Soucy, wrongly believing that it was her place to speak for the teenager, responded by telling His Imperial Highness of King Louis XVIII’s wedding plans for his niece.

  Marie-Thérèse was stunned by what she perceived to be de Soucy’s disloyal and high-handed behavior. De Soucy had already upset the Hües by telling Madame Hüe – recently arrived in Vienna – that her husband had made a pass at her during the journey from Paris. Marie-Thérèse, disgusted by the governess’s behavior, began to encourage de Soucy to return quickly to France. Although Marie-Thérèse would bear a grudge against the woman for many years to come, she managed to write her former servant three very polite letters before her departure. In one, she asked de Soucy to ‘please kiss’ Madame de Mackau (de Soucy’s mother), and Madame de Chanterenne when she arrived in Paris. Marie-Thérèse requested twice that Madame de Soucy send her a particular tapestry from Paris that her mother had worked on and portraits that were with a Madame Thibaud, which Marie Antoinette had commissioned before her death. Her final request was that Madame de Soucy should tell everyone to contact her through the Hofburg court servant, Madame de Chanclos.

  Josépha de Chanclos, appointed by the Emperor to serve as head of household to Marie-Thérèse, was proving to be an astute choice. A French-born woman who had been married to an Austrian, Chanclos had served in the court of Franz’s first wife and had also known Marie Antoinette as a child. This immediately endeared her to Marie-Thérèse. Madame de Chanclos understood that the Emperor’s intention was to turn Marie-Thérèse into an Austrian Archduchess and prepare her for marriage to Archduke Karl. Franz would have loved to eliminate all of the French-speaking aristocrats from having contact with Marie-Thérèse, as many of them believed, like Marie-Thérèse, that the Austrians had abandoned the French royal family. However, to sever that tie would be impractical: although Marie-Thérèse had been taught German as a child, owing to her lack of education in the Temple Prison, she had simply forgotten most of it. Chanclos knew that her role, while grooming Marie-Thérèse for life at the Hofburg, was to keep a very close watch on her charge, and this included all communications coming in or going out from Marie-Thérèse. The Princess would be kept firmly under palace protection and starved of external contacts – including the highly undesirable news of Napoleon’s victories over the Imperial Austrian army in Italy.

  In addition to the seemingly invisible surveillance at the Hofburg, Vienna�
�s infamous Black Cabinet kept a lookout for any letters addressed to friends of the French Princess. Their spies made copies of all of Marie-Thérèse’s letters, which, having lived surrounded by informants and enemies, and astute beyond her years, she expected. She proceeded to write to her uncle and her friends on a regular basis as if she suspected nothing; however, she made a point of coloring her letters with glowing reports of the gemütlichkeit at the Hofburg – the cozy atmosphere she said her mother often spoke of with great sentimentality – and she always remembered to write of her gratitude to the Emperor.

  While the Emperor endeavored to keep Marie-Thérèse isolated from people and news that conflicted with his purpose, the public remained fascinated. A ‘Letter from Vienna’, written on January 17, just a week after her arrival at the Hofburg, and published on February 8 in the Gazette, reported that the only surviving daughter of Louis XVI had arrived on January 9, causing ‘as much sensation as a general regarded as the first man of war of the Empire’. This same letter also contained an unsettling piece of news: a young blonde woman had arrived at an auberge near Vienna insisting that she was Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France. The townspeople, completely credulous and in awe, welcomed her and showered her with honors. The police were called; the young woman was pronounced an impostor and arrested, though she subsequently, somehow, escaped their custody.

  Not long after Marie-Thérèse’s arrival in Vienna, her mother’s great friend, the Princesse de Chimay, had written to Hüe to ask what news he had of the Princess. French émigrés were concerned about the circumstances in which Marie-Thérèse was being kept; they feared she was imprisoned again, albeit this time in a gilded cell. The Princesse de Chimay, who lived in the province of Thuringia, Germany, had heard rumors that Marie-Thérèse had begun to hate the sound of music and showed signs of terror every time she saw a barred window. Thuringia was believed to be the place where the legend of ‘Barbarossa’ had occurred hundreds of years earlier. According to the myth, the ferocious Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I – known as ‘Barbarossa’ because of his red beard – had fallen asleep in a cave in the Kyffäuser Mountains and would wake, the folk tale continued, when the ravens ceased to fly. Thuringia, steeped in romantic lore, became the epicenter of the new Romantic movement, whose philosophy, literature, art and music attempted to appropriate the ideals of the French Revolution.

  Within Thuringia, towns like Jena and Hildburghausen became home to writers such as Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Schiller and Goethe, who had met in 1794 at the University of Jena. Another writer who studied in Jena was Clemens Brentano, who would later co-author, with his brother-in-law, Achim von Arnim, a collection of poetic German folk tales called Des Knaben Wunderborn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). These stories inspired another pair of brothers to write similar tales – the brothers Grimm. Des Knaben Wunderborn was so influential among the German Romanticists that portions of it were later set to music by composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler and others. And it was not long before Thuringia was in a fever over Marie-Thérèse, the tragic Princess who had been held captive in the tower.

  Madame de Chimay had written to Hüe to ask if there was anything she could do to help the Princess. Still in Vienna, Hüe was finding it increasingly difficult to communicate with Marie-Thérèse. He would send her letters written in lemon juice, which she could read by firelight, or, knowing that Hüe would watch for her when she walked Coco in the gardens of the Hofburg, she would make signs that she and Hüe had previously concocted. Although Hüe had been told to leave Austria, he delayed his departure until he could get word to Marie-Thérèse through Madame de Chanclos that he was going to join King Louis XVIII in Italy. She was heartbroken, but she did not complain at all to Franz. She did complain, however, when the Hofburg staff tried to take away her dog. Coco had bitten the Prince de Gavre and the Emperor’s advisor insisted the dog had to go. Marie-Thérèse stood firm and argued that the dog was the only thing she had left of her brother’s. Franz knew better than to fight her in this battle and let the dog stay.

  On February 19, her spirits were buoyed when she spied an old family friend while on her way to Mass. It was Comte Fersen, the man who had tried, unlike her Austrian cousins, to rescue her family. As she passed him, she blushed and offered salutation. Upon leaving the service, she turned to look at him once more. Fersen wrote in his memoir that he thought she had grown to look more like her aunt Madame Elisabeth than her mother, though she nonetheless evoked the memory of the late Queen. The man who had known Marie-Thérèse as a little girl in happier times and who had accompanied the Princess and her family to the outskirts of Paris on the night of the ill-fated flight to Varennes, decided that, apart from her face being more fully formed, the Princess appeared unchanged.

  She had, of course, changed in many ways. She had come also to represent so much. There had been those at Versailles who remembered her as an insufferably haughty child and those throughout France who, because of her bloodline, believed her to be the incarnation of evil. By 1796, however, as her uncle Louis XVIII wrote on February 18, she had become to many: ‘the angel which God has sent to erase Evil’. Certain that this angel would change the course of events, Louis wrote in the same letter: ‘your union with my nephew’ will bring about the Bourbon restoration to the throne of France. Still, however, Marie-Thérèse, in close quarters to the charming Archduke Karl, had failed to hear one word from d’Angoulême.

  Chapter XIV

  The Émigrés

  While marie-Thérèse was learning to re-adjust to a life of opulence after three years in prison, many ancien régime courtiers were learning to live by their wits in exile. Some had remained on continental Europe; others had sailed to England, Sweden and America. They found a variety of careers and sympathetic helping hands from disparate places. Some, who were lucky enough to have been able to transport silver and porcelain, sold their family heirlooms discreetly at auction. Others tried to use hobbies they had learnt in France, such as painting and embroidery, to earn a living. The Comtesse de Saisseval, having arrived in London after a harrowing sea voyage with her thirteen-day-old baby, took to making straw hats. Fortunately, the bonnets caught on among the fashionable women of British society, and she was able, at last, to support herself. Others engaged in trades such as bookbinding and manufacturing.

  While the English were at first sympathetic to the arrival of French aristocrats who had escaped the scaffold, England had been at war with France for a number of years and a growing mistrust forced Parliament, in 1796, to renew the Alien Act, a law which forbade foreigners to live near the coast in case of invasion. A number of the French émigrés were moved from the Channel Islands and mainland coastal towns and relocated to London.

  After the Baronne de Courtot was released from Paris’s La Force prison she fled to Germany. When she had been in England as the Princesse de Lamballe’s lady-in-waiting, she had had the foresight to leave much of her jewelry there and in Germany was able to sell much of it for cash. In Germany, she was treated with great kindness, especially by the daughters of Marie Antoinette’s deceased friends, the Princesses of Hesse. She was invited to their castles, her favorite being on the border of the ‘green forests of Thuringen … and picturesque ruins’. She recalled that they all enjoyed playing a party game called ‘Boston’. Courtot was also included in family weddings and baptisms and was especially touched when, on one occasion, Queen Louise of Prussia stepped out of protocol, kissed her, and exclaimed, ‘I hope to see you frequently here.’ The Queen also asked Courtot to recount the details of the Princesse de Lamballe’s sad end.

  Madame de la Tour du Pin had moved with her family to a farm near Albany, New York, where she churned and sold her own butter. Another who survived reversals was the cunning Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. The Bishop, whose own mother had professed that her son was too immoral to be a cleric, initially went to England. He was not, however, accepted in British society as he had hoped and left in disgrace. Talleyrand
then made the journey to Philadelphia where he fared better. In the Quaker ‘City of Brotherly Love’, he was entertained by the socially prominent Binghams, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. He profited in exile, selling property for a time in New Jersey as well as secret British documents, obtained in London, to the Spanish envoy in America. Moreau de St Méry, the son of a rich colonialist who had embroiled himself in Parisian politics, also fled to Philadelphia. He opened a bookstore, where many of the émigrés congregated to discuss events. In the 1790s, one out of every ten Philadelphians was a French émigré. Many others migrated to Boston, New York, the Caribbean and the American frontier.

  Shunned by the aristocracy in Europe, the son of Philippe Égalité, who had become the new Duc d’Orléans, made his way from small town to small town using pseudonyms, and leaving a trail of illegitimate children from Switzerland to Scandinavia. Finally, he too made his way to the United States, settling in Boston. There, he taught French and lived above the famous Union Oyster House.

  Some courtiers remained in France, displaying the chameleon’s knack, serving, and in some cases, profiting, under the new political administration. Madame de Chanterenne, who had suffered terrible financial reversals when her husband became incapacitated and they had had to relocate to a home in the country, was offered a job with the family of Napoleon Bonaparte. She wrote to Marie-Thérèse to ask permission to accept the post, though without mentioning her straitened circumstances, and she ultimately went to Naples to live at court with Napoleon’s sister. Living under the new Directory, Marie Antoinette’s former First Lady-in-Waiting, Madame Campan, opened a school for girls in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Among her students were Napoleon’s stepdaughter, Hortense, and Eliza Monroe, daughter of America’s Minister to France and future President, James Monroe.