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

by Susan Nagel

  By early spring 1796, the Directory had decided its position on the subject of nobility: unless an aristocrat was proven a traitor to the new government through specific and chargeable actions, the second état was welcome to live peacefully in France and work alongside the bourgeoisie. The government had already set a certain tone by sparing the life of the King’s surviving daughter, Marie-Thérèse. Twenty-six-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been elevated from General of the Interior Army to Commander-in-Chief of the French expedition in Italy, believed that many of the émigrés could prove useful, and he offered many of the former courtiers an olive branch – coveted posts in his army. Some aristocrats returned to their homeland to serve the new and seemingly more forgiving government. Some, however, refused to return to France, preferring poverty and deprivation to living under the rule of one regarded by many as ‘the Usurper’.

  For most émigrés, Marie-Thérèse represented a beacon of hope for the future and the embodiment of France’s glorious past. She received a daily stream of letters at the Hofburg from priests asking for asylum in Austria, from citizens in Switzerland, Germany and Italy who had harbored émigrés and asked Marie-Thérèse to reimburse them for their trouble, and from women unknown to her asking for positions in her household. For some individuals, to be able to serve Marie-Thérèse of France presented a nostalgic link to the ancien régime; for others, employment on the staff of the ‘Orphan of the Temple’ would, they imagined, result in handsome remuneration.

  Although she had instructed Monseigneur de la Fare to reply to the multitude of émigrés who had written her at the Hofburg, they, despite often writing of great hardship, received no financial relief from the Princess. Many were shocked and insulted and deemed her uncharitable. Among those who had written Marie-Thérèse offering her services was her mother’s dear friend, the Princesse de Tarente. Tarente believed that Marie-Thérèse would most certainly beg her to come and live at the Hofburg. When Tarente did not receive an effusive reply from Marie-Thérèse, she dispatched an angry note to Monsieur Hüe accusing Marie-Thérèse of being cold-hearted. The Marquise de Favras, now living in Bohemia, was another who wrote a poignant note and received an unsatisfactory reply.

  While Franz lavished Marie-Thérèse with shelter, clothing and an allowance fit for an archduchess, he was not entirely forthcoming about what she was entitled to receive. Others set out to secure for Marie-Thérèse what was rightfully hers. Before arriving in Vienna in late January, Comte Fersen had traveled from court to court across Europe in an attempt to retrieve the money and jewels Marie Antoinette had so carefully set aside for her daughter in the event of her own death. Still loyal to the memory of the late Queen, Fersen had gone first to question Mercy on the whereabouts of the money – hundreds of thousands of livres – and jewels that Marie Antoinette had entrusted to him. Mercy replied that he had given them to the late Queen’s sister, Marie Christine (Princess Albert of Saxe-Teschen). He wrote to the Princess, who explained that she had sent everything to Emperor Franz II in Vienna. Fersen also wondered what had happened to the money that Marie Antoinette had sent to her sister in Naples. Upon that inquiry, he was told that the money had never made it to Naples. Neither did anyone seem to know the whereabouts of Monsieur Léonard, who had slipped out of France with a case full of the Queen’s diamonds.

  Fersen, suspecting that most of the money and at least some of the jewels had, somehow, made their way to the Holy Roman Emperor, was determined to force Franz II to relinquish them to Marie-Thérèse. However, at an audience with Franz on February 24, Fersen was horrified to learn that although the Emperor admitted that he had much of his cousin’s inheritance, he intended to hold onto it and use it as her dowry. He also informed Fersen that Marie-Thérèse ought not to have any complaints as she was being treated on an equal footing with his own sisters. Besides, the Emperor added, she was only seventeen and not old enough to manage her own money. Fersen countered with the fact that in France seventeen was considered of age, but this was something the Emperor already knew.

  Fersen was in Vienna not only on behalf of Marie-Thérèse, who he now realized had no idea of the fortune due her, but also in the hopes of collecting something from the estate of Marie Antoinette to assist Madame de Korff, the woman who had risked her own life in order to provide Marie Antoinette with her false passport for her ill-fated trip to Varennes. In late March, Comte Fersen was able to see Marie-Thérèse during an official visit to the Hofburg; however, there were so many people around the Princess that he simply could not speak with her on confidential matters.

  Marie-Thérèse continued to believe that the Emperor was, at heart, a good man and that he had her best interests at heart. She understood that he wanted her to marry Archduke Karl. She thought, however, that he would eventually allow her to be reunited with her French family and abide by what she had been told were her parents’ wishes and marry the Duc d’Angoulême. That plan was further stalled, however, when, on March 27, Easter Sunday, 1796, Napoleon was victorious on the Italian front and Louis XVIII was ordered to leave Verona immediately. In rare accord, Franz and Louis agreed that it was an inauspicious time for the Princess to join her Bourbon uncle, who was now in search of another safe haven.

  Franz was delighted to be rid of the man who had been such a thorn in his side. Although Louis was a King without a country and his machinations could be largely ignored, the Emperor also knew that Louis was capable of going behind his back and causing trouble. The previous year Louis had expressed his desire to join the Prince of Condé’s forces in Germany. When the Emperor denied him permission, Louis, circumventing his then host, wrote to Empress Catherine of Russia, who enthusiastically encouraged Louis to join the army of exiles. Franz ignored the Czarina, stood firm and insisted that Louis remain in Italy, out of trouble. The Emperor also knew that Louis was intent on sabotaging his marriage plans for Marie-Thérèse and manipulating her into marriage to d’Angoulême.

  Before Louis left Verona, Marie-Thérèse surreptitiously sent her uncle a note giving him absolute assurance of her intentions:

  My uncle, I am extremely touched by your goodness and how you concern yourself with my establishment. You have chosen the Duc d’Angoulême for my husband; I accept with all my heart and I prefer this establishment to all, even an imperial crown if it is offered … I accept, then, with greatest joy, my cousin Angoulême … I very much desire that this marriage happens quickly.

  She would marry the Duc d’Angoulême because at the bottom of her heart she hoped that the Bourbon monarchy would return to France, and she knew that her marriage to the Duc d’Angoulême would indicate to millions that she believed in that dream.

  Louis took this letter as her official acceptance of his nephew’s hand in marriage and he adopted a much more aggressive stance toward achieving ‘their shared dream’ once he left Verona. To gain a higher profile as the King of France, he proceeded with his original plan to join the royalist army of the Duc d’Enghien on the banks of the Rhine, which infuriated Franz. Louis angered the Habsburg monarch even further when he enlisted the help of another Habsburg King, Charles IV of Spain. In order for Marie-Thérèse to marry her first cousin, a papal dispensation was required. Louis wrote to Charles IV asking him to use his influence with the Pope in order to obtain the special consideration. At the same time, Louis contacted the Spanish King’s ambassador to the Vatican, Señor d’Azara. The Spanish were obsessed with the notion that, in an effort to dismember France, Franz II would use Marie-Thérèse’s inherited rights to lay claim on Navarre, where, it could be argued, Salic law did not apply. D’Azara, acting precipitately and in the belief that Charles would have been violently against an Austrian alliance for the French Princess, approached the Pope and received his permission and blessing for the two first cousins to marry, thus giving Louis carte blanche to move forward with his plans. Unbeknown to d’Azara, Charles IV’s reply to Louis was that he would not intervene and approach the Pope.

  The Emperor
suffered yet another blow to his scheme when Archduke Karl, who at twenty-four was the youngest general in the Emperor’s army, was called away to lead imperial forces against Napoleon’s army along the Rhine. Marie-Thérèse wrote to Louis that with the Archduke away in battle, he ought to be reassured: ‘When he returns, surely I will no longer be here … therefore, you see, you have nothing to fear.’

  Having outfoxed the Emperor, Louis then had the nerve to remind Franz that since Marie Antoinette’s dowry had not been paid back to France, it should be paid directly to Marie-Thérèse. Franz was incensed and responded that he was treating Marie-Thérèse appropriately, like a princess. Louis wrote to his niece on May 3, explaining that relations with the Emperor had soured somewhat and that she would have to act as their go-between. ‘You are, my dear child, the link of friendship between the Emperor and me’, he wrote, before telling her how thrilled she would have been by the reception he received from the émigré army along the Rhine.

  With the advent of summer, the Emperor moved his entire family to the Schönbrunn Palace and for the first time since that final summer with her parents at Saint-Cloud, Marie-Thérèse was in a bucolic setting that gave her happiness. She was able to walk the gardens and breathe in the sweet-smelling aromas her mother had known as a child. She was allowed to visit the Convent of the Visitation near Belvedere Palace on the outskirts of Vienna and receive visits from some young French friends, including the two nieces of Monseigneur de la Fare. One of these, Alexandrine, later the Baronne du Montet, recalled that the first time she saw Marie-Thérèse she appeared in black, a ‘celestial beauty, blue eyes with a grandeur and unique expression, a svelte and well-formed figure, beautiful, radiant skin’. Alexandrine began to receive frequent visits from Marie-Thérèse and noted her azure-colored eyes and fresh and youthful beauty. In the countryside, Marie-Thérèse changed from her mourning clothes, often favoring cloths of vivid royal blue – the very color of the centuries-old Bourbon family banner. Marie-Thérèse had learned from her mother the impact that her choice of dress could have. Her calculation proved successful. Du Montet recalled that people were overcome at the very sight of the royal orphan.

  While Marie-Thérèse succeeded in making the statement she desired, she was personally uncomfortable with the emotions she evoked, so she developed a rapid walk to avoid the tears and adulation. Du Montet remembered that Madame de France, as she was referred to in Austria, inspired sentiments of veneration, admiration and love. Before his departure for the Rhine, Archduke Karl made it obvious to all that he too felt those sentiments for his cousin. In fact, it appears that his appreciation had blossomed into romantic feelings for Marie-Thérèse. When rumors suggested that the attraction was mutual, the émigré community alerted Louis XVIII. Despite the reassuring missives from his niece, Louis was right to be concerned. Before Karl left for battle, he had been most attentive to Marie-Thérèse while the Duc d’Angoulême had not written to her once. Louis, anxious not to lose momentum, wrote to Marie-Thérèse implying that d’Angoulême had romantic feelings for her but that he was so painfully shy that he needed her encouragement.

  Marie-Thérèse, hitherto innocent of any such sentiments, obediently wrote to her cousin. At last, in a letter dated July 5, 1796, Louis-Antoine responded from his home in exile in Edinburgh. He was happy to learn that she wanted him to write to her often. He wrote about the weather: the Scottish climate was miserable, but the people were nice. He wrote that his future was uncertain and that he did not know how long he would remain in Scotland. He wrote that, like Marie-Thérèse, his overwhelming desire was to serve the King of France. The letter was friendly, at best. He may have understood his duty, but he certainly did not understand women, displaying neither the charm nor the gallantry of his father, the Comte d’Artois, or his eighteen-year-old brother, the Duc de Berry, who was already winning women’s hearts.

  That summer, Archduke Karl scored impressive victories against Napoleon’s army on the Rhine. He became the idol of not only the entire Habsburg Empire but also of most French émigrés and thousands of young women who thought him dashing. The Duchesse d’Abrantès recorded in her memoir that four years after Karl’s expedition to the Rhine even Napoleon could not hide his admiration for the valiant Austrian Prince, remarking: ‘Here is a man who will never incur a syllable of reproach! Archduke Charles [Karl]. That man has a soul, a golden heart. He is a virtuous man.’2

  It was while Karl’s star was rising, and while Marie-Thérèse was content at the Schönbrunn, that she received a letter from Louis asking her to be ‘persuasive’ with the Emperor concerning a new idea. Louis wanted her to travel to the border between Germany and France, where, under the protection of the Emperor’s army, she could be married in secret to d’Angoulême. Although Marie-Thérèse had every intention of performing her duty, she most definitely did not want to rush into the marriage without her own conditions being met. She had recently met with Comte Fersen and learned of her mother’s legacy, and she now wrote to her uncle informing him that she did not intend to leave Vienna without some substantial part of it. She understood that life in exile among her wandering family members would require funds and she wanted to be in charge of her own money.

  In the meantime, she enjoyed herself with Madame de Chanclos’s two nieces, made friends with her Austrian cousins, Franz’s sisters, the Archduchesses Amelia and Maria Clementina, and renewed acquaintances with some French members of her family, who also sought her out as their go-between with the Holy Roman Emperor. One of those who arrived on her doorstep was Louise de Condé, daughter of the Prince de Condé. Louise had been boarding in a convent throughout the Terror and the Prince thought the time was now right for his daughter to join her cousin at the tranquil country home of the Habsburgs. The brilliant military tactician advised his daughter to write to Marie-Thérèse for permission to visit and to leave right away whether she received an answer or not. In the late summer of 1796, Louise arrived in Vienna. She reported to both her father and her brother that everyone had nothing but praise for the daughter of Marie Antoinette and that Marie-Thérèse in Vienna, after years of deprivation, had grown

  pretty, fat (a little too). She speaks well and said with grace what one ought to, but with more gravity than the Queen. She spoke with me of you and your children, very nicely; she is truly loved here, everyone praises her, says she is extremely pious.

  To her brother, Louise wrote of a series of misadventures on her way to Vienna, and offered her opinion that she thought Marie-Thérèse looked very like the late Queen of France. Louise also informed her family that Marie-Thérèse appeared to her to have suffered much and that she had confided to her that her real desire was to live quietly in a convent.

  Marie-Thérèse, had, through Monseigneur de la Fare, only just begun to learn of the difficulties facing many of her parents’ former courtiers in exile. She wanted to help them, but she was not yet in control of her money, so she surreptitiously sent small sums from her allowance through de la Fare and instructed him to send her deepest expressions of gratitude with an explanation of her situation to those in despair.

  With Napoleon’s forces gaining in Italy, Marie-Thérèse’s Bourbon cousins increasingly began to seek asylum elsewhere. Although Louis XVIII detested his wife, Marie Joséphine, it had been his father-in-law who had offered Louis XVIII shelter in Verona when he had escaped France. In return for that act of kindness, Louis had asked Marie-Thérèse to approach the Emperor and ask him to allow Marie Joséphine, unable to remain in her father’s conquered territory, as well as French clergy, exiled from Switzerland by Napoleon, to take refuge in Austria. Still just seventeen years old, Marie-Thérèse was placed in a pivotal position whereby she would act as the unofficial ambassador of the Bourbon government in exile to the Holy Roman Empire. Marie-Thérèse accordingly spent the entire summer pleading the case of family, extended family, friends and clergy until Franz grew even wearier of his Bourbon cousins and the intransigent Madame de France.

/>   While in Riegel with Condé’s army along the Rhine, Louis XVIII suffered a bullet wound to the head from an assassination attempt. The shot only grazed his scalp, and he recovered in a few days. He decided, however, to get far away from the battle front and traveled to the Prussian town of Blankenburg, where under the protection of the Duke of Brunswick he found accommodation, two rooms above a shop, for himself, his minister d’Avaray and a servant named Guignet. From there he hoped to make contact with a sympathetic ruler and re-establish his court in exile. At the same time he kept up the pressure on his nephew, Louis-Antoine, instructing the young man to court his niece. D’Angoulême complied and wrote to Marie-Thérèse on September 3, that since she had given him permission to write her frequently, he would, and that he wished he could spend all day every day writing her. ‘The sentiments that my amiable and very dear cousin inspire in me are at once my happiness and my torment.’ Toward the end of this note, which, in fact, did reveal a shy nature, he bid her ‘Adieu’, and wrote that he hoped her heart could read in his ‘the tender homage and eternal attachment of your very affectionate cousin’.

  In mid-September, the imperial family returned to the Hofburg. Franz remained convinced that he could arrange a marriage between his much-sought-after brother and Marie-Thérèse. The Emperor and his staff devised a plan based on the notion that if Marie-Thérèse could discover that pleasure was more appealing than duty, she might embrace life at the Hofburg. They surrounded her with a group of young women whom she genuinely liked and invited her to a constant stream of parties and balls, encouraging her to experience the normal life for a seventeen-year-old princess. For a while she appeared to be enjoying herself.

  On September 16, 1796, Gouverneur Morris, the American to whom the late King Louis XVI had entrusted a great deal of money before his execution, happened to be wandering the Prater, Vienna’s lively amusement park. There, Morris came upon: