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

by Susan Nagel

  It was true that Karl had proved to be a leader among men, but neither he nor his brother, the Emperor, had managed to control Marie-Thérèse. She had demonstrated time and again that she was a formidable opponent and that her loyalties were first and foremost to France. Even if she had accepted marriage to the Austrian Archduke she probably would have insisted on the removal of Salic law or, at the very least, something like the Pragmatic Sanction that had placed her (their) grandmother on the throne of her own empire. She was an accomplished strategist and knew that presented with these circumstances she would have been able to quite effortlessly become de jure ruler of France. However, because she had remained steadfast to what she believed was best for France, to her father’s memory and her belief in divine right, she had rejected the Habsburg route. She would continue in her role as team player, with her Bourbon relatives poised to mobilize allies throughout Europe to put a portly and awkward fifty-nine-year-old man – the man she had regarded as her father since the death of her own father in January 1793 – on the throne of France.

  With the defeat of Napoleon came a pervasive need to investigate the twenty-five years of convulsion in French society, as well as a flood of nostalgia for the past. Ministers like Francois Guizot, François-Auguste Mignet, Augustin Thierry, and Jules Michelet, who would serve in the France of the Restoration, would not only write their reflections on the Revolution but also exhibit a penchant for a romantic re-examination of such figures as Charlemagne, Abelard and Heloïse, and for translating heroic dramas from Latin into French, thereby popularizing a thirteenth-century text by Guillaume de Nangis on the House of Capet. Augustin Thierry also looked to the past, claiming that the defeat of Napoleon had created an opportunity to put into place a plan devised by the seventeenth-century Abbé Saint-Pierre, who had called for a European confederation – a union of monarchs.

  While the historians began to explicate and deconstruct, the Bourbons sprang into action. The Comte d’Artois had embarked from Great Yarmouth at the end of January 1814 and journeyed to The Hague in order to pave the way for his brother’s return to France. The Duc de Berry, the La Ferronnays and others made their way to Cherbourg. Marie-Thérèse’s husband had joined the Duke of Wellington in the Pyrenees at the moment of triumph and had proved to be a good soldier, adding luster to the family’s image.

  Meanwhile, from the tiny town of Eishausen, Vavel de Versay dispatched three letters to the Comte d’Artois, the Duc de Berry and the Duc d’Angoulême, now all on the continent. ‘De Versay’ offered them his undying support and expressed his longing that he would soon ‘experience the pleasure of knowing you personally’.

  In England, the Prince Regent, who had so openly demonstrated his friendship for the exiled Bourbons, traveled from London to the country town of Stanmore, to meet with Louis XVIII and Marie-Thérèse at the Abercorn Arms. It was recorded that the crowd went wild and lifted his carriage in the air, and greeted the future George IV with effusive cheers. This meeting was a preliminary to an official celebration to honor the Bourbons that the Prince of Wales had planned to take place in London in a few days, on April 20. The Examiner would later criticize events, complaining that it was extremely inappropriate that the King of France, ‘huzzaed’ by the people of England, had not been invited to stay at either Buckingham House or St James’s Palace. Instead, Louis and his entourage were booked into the Grillon Hotel on Albemarle Street.

  The Prince Regent, Louis XVIII and Marie-Thérèse arrived in Piccadilly at around 5 p.m. to enthusiastic crowds and orchestras playing ‘God Save the King’. The Duchesse de Gontaut-Biron wrote that the whole city had been decorated for the day and its people were joyous. Even Madame de Staël conceded, ‘All London is drunk with joy.’ Devonshire House hoisted the colors of France. Flags embroidered in gold and silver bearing the arms of the Bourbons were waved in the streets while other revelers sported the Bourbon white cockade. King Louis XVIII gave the future English King the Order of St Esprit for his kindness. The Mayor of London, politicians of all political complexions and members of the English aristocracy came out to hail Marie-Thérèse, mindful no doubt that she would be the one in control of the invitation list at the new French court.

  Fanny Burney, the author known socially as Madame d’Arblay, received a letter from Queen Charlotte of England inviting her to meet the Duchesse d’Angoulême. Unfortunately there was some kind of mix-up and when d’Arblay arrived at the hotel on Albermarle Street she instead came face to face with the King of France. She would, however, be one of those Englishwomen who would have the pleasure of receiving an invitation to meet with Marie-Thérèse later that year in Paris. D’Arblay recalled that she had studied a portrait of the Duchesse d’Angoulême, which depicted the daughter of the late King as a melancholy woman, but that when she had met with her later in the year at the Tuileries she thought her smile was so ‘becoming, that it brightens her countenance into a look of youth and beauty’. When d’Arblay discovered that Marie-Thérèse had just finished reading her latest book in French because she could not find an English copy in Paris, the author insisted on sending the Duchess an English edition. Marie-Thérèse then delighted the author by promising that she would read the book again in English. Madame d’Arblay inquired whether Marie-Thérèse preferred to speak with her in English or French, and Marie-Thérèse, with great modesty, insisted that her English was not very good, although D’Arblay noted that the Duchess had understood every word she had said to her in English. D’Arblay found her charming, with impeccable manners and no pretension and more like an English aristocratic girl from the country than a future Queen of France.

  The day after the great celebration in London, the Prince Regent gave a ball at Carlton House and invested Louis XVIII with the Order of the Garter. Louis and Marie-Thérèse, with a small entourage that included Hue, who had remained in their service throughout the long years of exile, sailed from Dover a few days later and arrived in Calais to hordes of cheering people. Although she was moved by the reception, Marie-Thérèse also felt agitated and disconcerted, recalling the scenes of violence on the road from Varennes. On April 28, the royals arrived in Amiens to the astonishing sight of the local townspeople’s homes belted in black fabric with their chimneys painted black. Louis and Marie-Thérèse discovered that these displays of mourning had been put into effect upon the execution of Louis XVI and had remained in place since that day.

  On Friday, April 29, Louis XVIII and his niece arrived at the palace of Compiègne, which they found to have been redecorated by Napoleon with a dizzying plethora of ‘N’s, bees and eagles. Even the tableware had been monogrammed in tribute to the former Emperor. Waiting to receive Marie-Thérèse were beloved childhood friends, such as Madame de Tourzel and her daughter, Pauline, now married and known as the Comtesse de Béarn. It was an emotional and tearful reunion. Also at Compiègne were those whom the Bourbons mistrusted, including Talleyrand who in fact had played a major role in effecting their return. Recognizing Napoleon’s marshals among the groups waiting to greet the Bourbons, Louis was conciliatory, calling them all ‘good Frenchmen’. The minions of the former Emperor of the French were impressed.

  The King and Marie-Thérèse entered Paris on May 3 to be greeted by deafening cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’ Marie-Thérèse wore a white gown embroidered with silver leaves, essentially draping herself in her own interpretation of the Bourbon banner. At her neckline was a ruff, which made her seem rigid to the crowds. Worse, she appeared ‘English’, wearing no jewelry and just a toque – a little rimless feathered hat – described by Le Moniteur as ‘à l’anglaise’, which to the conquered French was considered distasteful and a major fashion faux pas. Two years later the historical novels of Walter Scott were translated into French and not long after that a mania to look like Scott’s heroines swept Paris and that same style of toque would become the vogue. Upon her arrival, however, Marie-Thérèse was judged too modest and severe by Parisian standards. Although to the crowds Marie-Thérèse had app
eared composed and dignified, as soon as she arrived at the Notre Dame cathedral she collapsed on a prayer stool and wept.

  After prayers, they drove again through the streets of Paris as great numbers of curious people turned out to see the only royal child to have survived the Reign of Terror. The King was thrilled to see that a statue of the heroic Bourbon king Henri IV had been restored to its place on the Pont-Neuf in his honor. Madame de Chastenay watched the royal cortège pass by on the rue Saint-Honoré and recalled that the street was so adorned that it resembled a theater. Her glimpse of the King’s carriage, covered in bouquets of lilies, and the whole spectacle, the return of the royal livery after so long, reduced her to tears. While the King waved theatrically at the crowds, Marie-Thérèse sat rigid and lifeless. Madame de Genlis wrote that the people of Paris were shocked that Marie-Thérèse did not look happy in Paris and that she appeared to be in some sort of pain. Fortunately, Marie-Thérèse did not have to endure the further agony of passing by the Temple Prison on her route because Napoleon had torn it down over five years earlier, but she did pass the Conciergerie, where her mother had spent her last days. When at last the carriage arrived at the Tuileries Palace, Marie-Thérèse collapsed. When she came round she found that she had been placed in her new apartment, the Pavillon de Flore, the chambers facing the Seine in which her late mother had lived.

  The following morning, a grand parade of troops formed on the banks of the Seine facing the Tuileries. In the afternoon, commanded by His Imperial Highness, Grand Duke Constantine, the soldiers stood under the open windows of the Tuileries Palace where the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia were joined by King Louis XVIII and his family. Seemingly recovered, the Duchesse d’Angoulême also greeted the crowds and that evening the royal party sat down to a splendid banquet.

  The Comtesse de Boigne, daughter of the Marquis d’Osmond, a nobleman at court at Versailles, and an ex-mistress of the current Duc d’Orléans, wrote that Marie-Thérèse was the only person of the royal family people remembered in France. Over the past fifteen years, while the rest of the Bourbons had faded in the minds of many, Napoleon had created a new aristocracy with grand new titles and riches. Marie-Thérèse wanted nothing to do with them. During one evening at the Tuileries, Marie-Thérèse offended the wife of Napoleon’s great Marshal Ney. His wife, a niece of Madame de Campan, was known to Marie-Thérèse as a girl. Instead of addressing Madame Ney by her formal name, Princesse de la Moscowa, in public, Marie-Thérèse greeted her by her Christian name, Aglaé. Napoleon’s appointees and their fashionable wives, some of whom had been shopkeepers and servants during the reign of Louis XVI, found that déclassé. They also ridiculed Marie-Thérèse for having arrived in Paris with a wardrobe of English country clothes. Now in her mid-thirties, her hair had gone from blonde to a dull, reddish brown, and, when she spoke, they found her voice unpleasant and raucous. (Often criticized as unpleasant, her voice was described by some as ‘hoarse’ and ‘exceedingly high’. Because of the affliction strangers were often put off by what sounded like ‘brusqueness’.) To the Parisian parvenus, being out of fashion was an unforgivable sin. They could not, however, fault her in her royal bearing. It was impeccable. She was so obviously regal that members of the ancien régime wept merely at the sight of her.

  In addition to those ennobled by Napoleon, Marie-Thérèse bore a grudge against those old friends who had prospered under the Empire. When she learned that Madame Campan had presided over a successful school and had even tutored members of the Bonaparte family, she shut the door on their relationship. In order to try and regain the royal family’s trust and favor, Madame de Campan began to write her memoirs, which were exceedingly loving and flattering toward her late mistress, Marie Antoinette. There was another person whom Marie-Thérèse continued to refuse to acknowledge. That was the son of the man whom she held responsible for her parents’ death: her cousin, Louis-Philippe, the Duc d’Orléans. After he had been refused Marie-Thérèse’s hand, he had married her first cousin, Marie Amélie, daughter of Marie Antoinette’s favorite sister, Maria-Carolina, Queen of the Two Sicilies. Marie Amelie was the younger of the two sisters with whom the Duc de Berry had flirted but never married. Out of respect for her mother, Marie-Thérèse agreed to meet with Amélie, and despite Marie-Thérèse’s contempt for Amélie’s husband, the two women became the best of friends in an almost bittersweet echo of their mothers’ friendship.

  King Louis XVIII, however, was keen to demonstrate his family’s forgiveness and one of his first actions was to return to Louis-Philippe the Orléans apanages, the income-producing fiefdoms given by the King of France to royalty that had been taken away by the revolutionary government in September 1792. It would not be until the end of the year that he would do the same for his own brother, d’Artois. Louis also immediately enacted measures for the Treasury to repay those kingdoms in which he had incurred expenses while in exile.

  Once more wishing to set the new constitutional monarchy off on the right foot, Louis established his court not at Versailles – which stood etched in the memories of Frenchmen as a palace of excess and lasciviousness and a place of isolation for the monarchy against the powerful voice of Parisian politics and publishing – but at the Tuileries Palace, from where Napoleon had enacted, in the minds of many Frenchmen, some very worthwhile measures. He also selected his cabinet of ministers from a broad political spectrum. Louis needed to convince French men and women, those born after the end of the ancien régime and those with long bitter memories, of France’s glorious past and of their commonalities – not their differences.

  To this end, Louis needed Marie-Thérèse, both as a symbol of the new regime and as an ally. He organized a series of ceremonies to pay homage to her murdered family and in an effort to bring ‘closure’ for his long-suffering niece and for the people of France, a requiem was sung in every church in Paris to honor the late King, Queen, Dauphin and Madame Elisabeth. At the cathedral of Notre Dame, the priest referred to Louis Charles as ‘an angel’. In June, on what was imagined to be the anniversary of his death, memorial services were held all around France commemorating ‘the little king and martyr’, but, because the Dauphin’s body could not be produced, gossip spread once again and Marie-Thérèse continued to suffer. Noting the sentiment of the people who pitied his young niece, and quite aware of his own precarious position, Louis declared to all, that he, in the absence of her father, was acting in her best interest, stating: ‘If my crown were of roses, I would give it up to her; but it is of thorns, and I keep it.’

  Privately, however, they bickered over family assets. When the King decided to make himself comfortable at Saint-Cloud, Marie-Thérèse complained that she should at least receive the same consideration as other returning émigrés and have the property returned to her. The King explained that Saint-Cloud was the property of the Crown, but Marie-Thérèse reminded her uncle that it was, by rights, hers because it had been given by her father to her mother. The King relented, and asked his niece if she could at least spare one little room for him if he decided to visit. They also squabbled over her appearance. The King told her that he wanted her to stop looking ‘ghoulish’ in public, cease wearing drab clothes, and put on some rouge. Louis XVIII was also critical of her general demeanor, which he felt might encourage their countrymen to feel guilt and shame.

  Louis reflected in his memoir that although it was Marie-Thérèse who was the heart of the court, she had neither the taste nor the inclination for celebrating at the Tuileries, where her family had suffered so much. She actually found any kind of gaiety, especially the laughter of parties, within that particular palace sacrilegious. She preferred modest costume as she had worn simple clothing for so long. The household she established at the Tuileries would not be a gay maison. She banished the flashy clothing of the Napoleonic period, preferring that her ladies wear simple, narrow white silk dresses with trains and white lace mantillas, almost reminiscent of mourning veils – similar to the bridal cost
ume that Antigone was meant to have worn to her death. The King, meanwhile, wore a dark blue morning coat with gold epaulettes; most of the men wore military garb, rather than the lavish costume of the ancien régime – though Louis continued to wear powdered wigs, which had long since gone out of fashion.

  On May 17, the King took Marie-Thérèse to the Opéra to see Oedipus at Colonus. Many of the audience members wore white and had fastened white lilies on their clothing in honor of the restored Bourbons. The evening was a calculated attempt to place Marie-Thérèse in the hearts of the public as their Princess – and, this time, Marie-Thérèse acquiesced, adorning herself in crown jewels and a magnificent gown. The King’s scheme worked. When a well-known verse – ‘She has lavished upon me her affection and her care’ – was sung, the King extended his hand for his niece to kiss. When she did, the audience jumped to its feet and began to shout, ‘Vive le Roi! Vive la Duchesse d’Angoulême!’

  The Parisians may not have always appreciated her wardrobe or sullenness, but they admired this singular woman who had shown such fortitude in accompanying her uncle through the snow from Mitau to Warsaw in the winter of 1801. As the King had named her, the people of France now hailed her as ‘the New Antigone’, the courageous, loyal and most dignified of daughters. Her mythic presence in Paris would prove fascinating to esteemed literary figures such as Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand, and Lamartine, all of whom would receive court patronage. Poets and musicians wrote ballads in her honor. The American author James Fenimore Cooper wrote a charming book called Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief, in which the protagonist, a handkerchief, lives among royalty. Cooper’s handkerchief testifies, in this account, that Marie-Thérèse was a wonderful woman known to have arranged for the exiled French noblemen to receive money.