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

by Susan Nagel

  The King’s wife, Marie Joséphine, departed Mitau as quickly and energetically as she had arrived, leaving Marie-Thérèse, new bride and new Duchesse d’Angoulême, to preside as first lady at her uncle’s court. It was clear to Marie-Thérèse from the moment of her arrival that Mitau was to be an attempt to mimic court life at Versailles, over which this Louis had never reigned. Excluding the soldiers, there were 180 people in the Mitau maison du roi. Louis was quick to establish the ceremonies of the lever and coucher, and the ceremonial public meal, the couvert, but with the King at his own table surrounded by bodyguards. When the royal family attended Mass, the soldiers stood at arms. The castle, which had suffered damage from fire, had been partially used as a hospital and barracks, and, although it was grand, the family and their household only had access to certain parts of it.

  Ritual and close quarters gave Marie-Thérèse, who hoped to conceive a child very soon, precious little time alone with her new husband. The royal family, like most families in rural areas, breakfasted and went to Mass early in the morning. After lunch at eleven in the morning, Marie-Thérèse would stroll and talk with Henriette de Choisy, Madame de Sérent and a few others in the household. Except for Henriette, who had come with Marie-Thérèse from Vienna, there were no other young people at the court. She took long walks, did needlework, and wrote letters to Pauline de Tourzel and her friends from Vienna, the Countesses Zichy and Esterhazy. Marie-Thérèse found that she had to mother elderly courtiers and priests, like the Cardinal de Montmorency, who often sat beside her at mealtimes and was stone deaf. Most of the distinguished figures to whom she played hostess, like General Suvorov, when he returned to Russia, were old, many infirm, leaving Marie-Thérèse little opportunity for fun.

  Visitors soon noticed that the Princess did not look happy. Many close to her commented that she had begun to lose the joyful freshness and remarkable spirit, which, despite deep loss and her time in prison, had seemed to lend her personality its distinctiveness. Franklin Darlington, an American who traveled among Louis XVIII’s coterie of spies, recalled in his memoirs that when he arrived in Mitau, he

  bowed before Madame Royale, the daughter of Marie Antoinette, and saw in her eyes the shadow of those terrors of her girlhood which, they say, never left her; the Duc d’Angoulême complained to me that the cold spoiled the hunting … gentlemen of the bed chamber, aides-de camp, equerries, almoners in ordinary, officers of the guard, all the functionaries of a court, intent upon the ritual of their duties, elbowed and jostled me with exquisite indifference to my comfort. It was like a nightmare in the palace of La Belle du Bois Dormant.1

  Some saw an irritability in Marie-Thérèse that echoed the days of her girlhood, when instead of being able to play with her brother in the gardens she was forced to sit for hours in public under the strain of heavy wigs and massive hooped skirts. Others noted that Marie-Thérèse simply ‘did not seem herself’. Madame de Chanterenne and her former charge continued to write to one another. Renète had given birth to a son in 1797. She had still not given him a name in the eyes of the Church and she wrote to Marie-Thérèse asking her to name her son and serve as his godmother. Marie-Thérèse agreed, suggesting that, since part of her name was Charlotte, why not name him Charles? She also granted Madame de Chanterenne’s wish that she would be the boy’s godmother, but the tone of her response was subdued and not at all what Renète had expected.

  Monsieur Hüe was also surprised by Marie-Thérèse’s tone. Jean-Baptiste Cléry had published his memoirs in England with the sanction and blessing of Marie-Thérèse and her uncle. The memoirs had sold well throughout Europe and America and had elicited a good deal of sympathy for Marie-Thérèse and the surviving Bourbon family. Hue, who had served the late King for many years and who had been mentioned in his will as ‘the loyal Hue’, told Marie-Thérèse that he hoped to publish his own account, and that he, like Cléry, would like her public approval for this venture. When she refused, Hüe was mystified. Whereas Hüe had been a cherished servant of the murdered king, Cléry had only joined the royal family in service while they were in the Temple Prison. Hue, who had actually suspected Cléry of initially being an informant, felt that he had a superior right to tell his story and struggled to understand why Marie-Thérèse had reacted in such a way.

  Many others were beginning to pen their own recollections of court life at Versailles and of the Revolution. Louis XVIII had already, in the winter of 1798-99 after arriving in Mitau, written Réflexions historiques sur Marie Antoinette. Understanding the current climate of interest in his niece, he decided that a heartrending story written by the Orphan of the Temple herself would be helpful to the Bourbon cause and encouraged Marie-Thérèse to write her own version of events. So, instead of enjoying her days as a newlywed, anticipating the birth of a child or simply enjoying the attentiveness of her new husband, Marie-Thérèse spent the summer reliving the traumas of the past, from the invasion of Versailles in October 1789, to the ill-fated flight to Varennes, to the day in August when her family was taken to Temple Prison. As she had been only ten years old at the time her family was forced from Versailles, Louis assisted her with names and explanations. It was a grueling task and the memoir reads as if its author is struggling to maintain self-control. Eight years after the flight from Varennes, she recalled with indelible clarity and specificity the murder of Dampierre on the route back to Paris from Varennes:

  he was flung to the ground, and a man on horseback rode over him and struck him several blows with a saber; others did the same, and soon killed him. The scene, which took place close to our carriage and under our eyes, was horrible for us …

  While attempting to keep her account clear-eyed and to be generous with the details of the events that ‘convulsed all France’, her pain would often resurface, as she averts her glance to recall: ‘My brother, especially, enchanted everyone by his amiability.’

  Her uncle persisted in making difficult demands on her, repeatedly pressuring her to perform her duty for the Bourbon cause. That summer, General Dumouriez, a nobleman who had turned Jacobin, came to see the Bourbons in Mitau. Having no desire to see a man who she felt had betrayed her father, Marie-Thérèse made a point of telling her uncle that she planned to be indisposed for the General’s entire visit. The King then informed his niece that the General would join them every day for dinner. Marie-Thérèse knew that she could not avoid her entire family for a week, so she agreed to face Dumouriez. Her uncle noticed that upon seeing the revolutionary soldier Marie-Thérèse grew pale and her expression glacial. The King understood the values that Marie-Thérèse had been inculcated with and from which she had proved she would not depart. If he, her King, were to formally pardon Dumouriez, Marie-Thérèse would have to do likewise. The King extended forgiveness and this seemed to calm her; but she could not resist challenging the military man, demanding: ‘Return my uncle to his subjects. God will do the rest.’ Dumouriez placed his hand on his heart and replied: ‘Ah, Madame! I could not save your father, and Providence does not let me take revenge.’

  Marie-Thérèse remained hopeful. Her uncle continued to receive assurances from the Czar and King George III of England that when Napoleon stumbled they would be there to return the Bourbons to the throne of France. Louis asked them to ensure that the Holy Roman Emperor would not dismember France. English ambassador Wickham had been replaced in Switzerland by a Mr Talbot, who in turn was removed from his post for being too embroiled with Louis’s spies. Wickham was then returned to Switzerland to deal with the émigrés on the continent while the English Parliament hammered out details for the return of the Bourbons to France. Feeling it imperative that he play a role in the negotiations, the Comte d’Artois moved from Edinburgh to London to represent his family’s interests. In a meeting with Foreign Minister Lord Grenville, d’Artois offered to lead an expedition to seize Lorient and Saint-Malo. According to d’Artois, the English agreed to provide men and money. On July 16, Louis received a proposal from the allies that stated
they would invade France and leave the borders of France as they were before the Revolution. The proposal, however, contained the proviso that although the allies believed the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy would be best for France, as foreign powers they could not enforce a particular regime on the people of France.

  D’Artois, less conciliatory and farsighted than his elder brother, was furious. He stalled negotiations and angrily returned to Edinburgh. By the time Louis had been apprized of his brother’s actions, the small window of opportunity had closed: Napoleon was on his way back from the Middle East, and by that winter, he had successfully engineered a coup d’état and proclaimed himself First Consul of France.

  Louis made one more desperate attempt. He wrote to Napoleon, groveling before the General’s feet by calling him a ‘great general’. Next, he offered Bonaparte advice: he must decide whether to be ‘Cesar or Monk’ (a reference to George Monk, the English General responsible for putting Charles II on the throne of England after its Civil War). Louis claimed that should Napoleon try to assume the mantle of sovereign of France, he would always be perceived by the world as a usurper. It was time for the Bourbons to come home, he wrote, and when he, Louis, ascended the throne, Napoleon could stay on as First Consul. On February 19, 1800, Napoleon installed himself at the Tuileries Palace.

  Two months later, as Napoleon began a second campaign into Italy, Louis gave in to the Duc d’Angoulême’s desire for glory, realizing too that the heir to the throne of France (after his uncle and father) should not appear to be disengaged from battle. His nephew would not fight in the Czar’s army but alongside Condé, whose troops were now in Italy with the Austrian army. When her husband left Mitau, Marie-Thérèse was still without child, and with Napoleon gaining ground by the minute, the chances of a Bourbon restoration were beginning to look bleak.

  In May, Comte Fersen arrived in Mitau and was stunned by the Princess’s appearance. She seemed stifled and genuinely drained of life. Fersen believed she had seen through her uncle’s ruse and was brokenhearted to discover that her husband had never really been interested in her at all. Fersen then delivered what he thought would be happy news for Marie-Thérèse. He informed her that it was his belief that her brother had been safely brought to Philadelphia. Once again, he misunderstood the pain this story would cause her. An additional assault, this time from, at last, a young person who came to Mitau, compounded her misery. It was Louis-Philippe, the son of the late ‘Philippe Égalité’, who, with his siblings, had been living a nomadic life in America. The new Duc d’Orléans was the very boy who had been put forth by his father as a marriage partner for Marie-Thérèse, and whom Marie Antoinette had rejected out of hand. He hoped to make amends with his uncle and reunify the different branches of the Bourbon family. Louis was willing, but this was one émigré for whom Marie-Thérèse found it impossible to feel any compassion, and she refused even to meet with him.

  By the summer of 1800, Napoleon’s army seemed invincible, having won the pivotal battle of Marengo in Piedmont; yet the people of France remained fascinated by the Bourbons. A book by the popular writer J. J. Regnault-Warin called Le Cimetière de la Madeleine became all the rage. It was claimed this was a true account of the escape of Louis Charles from the Temple Prison, told to the author by an unimpeachable source. In the book, Regnault-Warin mentioned the journal of Cléry, which everyone knew had been verified by Marie-Thérèse, implying that even she believed that her brother had survived. The book caused another groundswell of interest in the Royal Children, and, riding the wave of his success, four years later, Regnault-Warin followed that book with another royal mystery – the story of the masked prisoner in the Bastille that had so fascinated Marie Antoinette – L’Homme au masque de fer (The Man in the Iron Mask). Forty years later Alexandre Dumas would also recount this captivating tale.

  As a result of the overwhelming success of Le Cimetière de la Madeleine, Madame de Chanterenne wrote to Marie-Thérèse requesting permission to publish the memoir that she had handed her upon her departure from Temple Prison. Once again Marie-Thérèse refused a cherished friend, instructing Chanterenne to burn the papers, hide them, but, ‘above all, do not publish them’.

  On January 20, 1801, Louis received an order from the Czar stating that he was to leave Russia immediately. Paul had turned his back on the allies, and had grown tired of the quantity of couriers and political networking going on in Mitau. He had also learned of d’Avaray’s outspoken criticism of his decisions. Although the Czar wanted Louis gone from his realm, he showed no such hostility to Marie-Thérèse and invited her to stay with him at his palace in St Petersburg. She was furious that the Czar would importune her uncle in so humiliating a manner and she refused the invitation.

  Without a known destination and without warning, the King would be forced to travel in the dead of winter. The Czar had also neglected to make his latest payment to Louis, compelling him to travel with very little money. The Bourbons held a sale of some furniture and belongings at Mitau to raise funds, but the items reached low prices. Stepping into the breach, Marie-Thérèse ordered Madame de Sérent to sell the stunning suite of diamonds that Czar Paul had given her as a wedding present, and then announced that she would follow her uncle wherever he would go. Overwhelmed by her devotion and sense of duty, Louis likened his niece to the faithful daughter of Oedipus, another exiled king, who appeared in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, and proclaimed her ‘The New Antigone’ – an epithet that would follow her wherever she went.

  Chapter XVII

  The New Antigone

  The snow was deep and the blizzards fierce. Their carriage had turned on its side and Marie-Thérèse’s face was bruised from having hit the window glass. It took three hours to turn the coach back over on to its wheels. For five days, much of it on foot because the horses were too frightened by the storms to continue, Marie-Thérèse accompanied her uncle across the plains of Lithuania to Memel, at the mouth of the Niemen River. They had hoped to return to France in glory; instead, one year into the new century, their entire caravan consisted of two carriages and for one night, when no inn would receive them, they had to bed down in a cabaret hall that stank of tobacco and alcohol.

  The Comte de Hautefort wrote that before she left Mitau, Marie-Thérèse, in possession of little cash herself, gave the Vicomte d’Agoult 100 ducats to disperse among the faithful gardes du corps with the instruction that he was not to reveal the source of the gift. Hautefort explained that d’Agoult did as he was told, but that everyone knew who the benefactress was. As she assisted her overweight uncle through the snow, the Comte d’Avaray, the Marquise de Sérent, Philippe Louis César d’Hardoisneau, Abbé Edgeworth and two domestics managed the coaches and dragged the horses. Along the way, things became so desperate that one of Louis’s secretaries and sometimes priest to Marie-Thérèse, Abbe Marie, committed suicide. At his last words ‘Mademoiselle de Choisy’, Marie-Thérèse suffered the shock of realizing that her confessor was in love with her best friend and demoiselle d’honneur.

  Louis had sent ahead a messenger to deliver letters to Frederick William II, the King of Prussia, asking permission for the exiled French royal family and their retinue to reside somewhere in his realm. The messenger, who waited for Louis in Memel, had received a reply that the King of Prussia, who did not want to irritate Bonaparte, was first waiting to hear if the First Consul of France would allow him to do so. From Memel, Louis wrote again to his brother, praising their niece (and d’Artois’s daughter-in-law) for her unparalleled bravery, and calling her ‘our admirable daughter’ and ‘the New Antigone’. Marie-Thérèse wrote her own letter from Memel – to Queen Louise of Prussia, daughter of Marie Antoinette’s close friend, Fredericka of Hesse. In the note she too requested a place to live for herself and her uncle. Marie-Thérèse and the Queen, who was famous for her beauty, had received constant reports on each other from the time they were girls and they had always felt a close connection. In her note, Marie-Thérèse explained
to Queen Louise that although she had been offered asylum in St Petersburg, she could never abandon her uncle. ‘He is everything to me, he takes the place of all that I have lost,’ she told her. And it was Marie-Thérèse who received word from Queen Louise that Napoleon had agreed to allow the French royal family and their entourage to stay in Warsaw on the condition that Louis abandon his title and be known as the ‘Comte de l’Isle’ (a reference to property he had owned in Armagnac before the Revolution) and that Marie-Thérèse be known as the ‘Marquise de la Meilleraye’ (after the Château de la Meilleraye, a property owned before the Revolution by the Comte d’Artois).

  On March 6, Louis, Marie-Thérèse and their attendants arrived in Warsaw where they were shown to the Vassilovitch House on Krakow Street. Marie-Thérèse wrote to her husband that he should stay with the army; he wrote to the Prince de Conde that he was going to take leave of the military and join her. ‘I am so angry that my wife is obliged to take such a course in this season,’ he explained to his cousin. A couple of weeks later, d’Angoulême arrived in Warsaw to rejoin his wife and uncle. On March 30, English statesman Lord Glenbervie wrote in his journal that a Mr Routh from the War Office had come to see him regarding rumors in Paris that Napoleon had plans to appoint the Due d’Angoulême as his successor. The story that had circulated was that Napoleon’s wife preferred the old nobility to the social climbers around her. Members of the French police dispatched spies to Warsaw to watch the exiled royals.

  Shortly after d’Angoulême’s appearance, the party learned that Czar Paul had been assassinated in his bedchamber by a small group of allegedly drunken aristocrats, disgusted with what they believed to be Paul’s erratic decision-making. His son, Alexander, although implicated in the plot, was now proclaimed Alexander I. Louis declared that he harbored no hostility toward the murdered sovereign, who had, in fact, for a while showed great generosity of spirit toward the exiled French royal family. D’Angoulême and Marie-Thérèse all hoped that the new Czar would prove to be an ally, but Alexander showed little interest in the Bourbon cause. The local Polish nobility, however, demonstrated considerable deference to the French royal family. After all, King Louis XVIII of France was a great-grandson of their late King, Stanislas Leszczynski. Although Louis appreciated their affection, he told Marie-Thérèse that his intention was to soon leave Warsaw and go to the court of Naples. Once again, she responded that she would go wherever he went. When Louis informed his brother of his desire to head for Italy, d’Artois replied that he wanted his son and daughter-in-law with him in Scotland. Louis was stunned by his brother’s sudden patriarchal interest in the couple, and he wrote to him explaining to d’Artois that, while he clearly had other comforts – his mistress and the allowance from George III – Marie-Thérèse and d’Angoulême were all that he had – his ‘everything’.