by Susan Nagel
The people of France did not forget her. They, too, mourned her death. In Paris, Louis Napoleon, one year from becoming Emperor Napoleon III, held a private service for the daughter of the late King of France at the Chapelle de l’Élysée; and, on November 6, with the full diplomatic corps from a multitude of foreign countries present, a solemn and dignified Mass was held at the Madeleine church. The writer Sainte-Beuve eulogized her on November 3, 1851. In his essay, Sainte-Beuve chronicled the life of this Child of France and wrote: ‘She was not eleven years old when, with the terrible days of October 1789, her public role beside her mother began.’ In truth, she had been the object of worldwide fascination from the very moment that her parents announced her impending birth.
In the later half of the nineteenth century, after the demise of the Second Empire, Henri, Comte de Chambord, was offered the crown. In 1871, from the Château de Chambord, Henri issued a manifesto. In homage to his aunt, he insisted on the abolishment of the tri-colored flag of the Revolution. When informed that the people of France would not accept the white banner of the ancien régime, Henri returned to exile, paving the way for the Third Republic of France, the unwitting legacy of Marie-Thérèse to her people.
Afterword
Although there have been a handful of novels published over the past hundred and fifty years that have advanced the possibility that the ‘Sophie’ who died at Castle Eishausen was the real Marie-Thérèse, nobody has been able to verify this claim. In 1853, when the book The Dark Count by German author Ludwig Bechstein, Librarian to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, made this assertion, the author merely articulated what had already been widely speculated. In 1872, The Mystery of Hildburghausen by Brachvogel offered another account. Hungarian author Jókai Mór contributed Névtelen vár to the legend in 1877. This compelling tale, translated into English as The Nameless Castle, was published in England in 1889 and in the United States in 1898. Rumors started to fly that the coffin buried in Hildburghausen did not, in fact, contain a body, but a wax figure. On July 8, 1891, the coffin was opened and a female corpse was found within, laying one part of the fable to rest. In 1926, the first investigations by O. V. Maeckel were published in Germany, and the book by Saxe-Altenburg in 1954. In 1980, Mór’s book was made into a six-part German television series entitled Die Namenlose Burg.
There has been a recent revival and groundswell of attention focused on the theory of a switch. For the past decade, each September, a large group of eminent European scientists, doctors and historians have convened in Ingelfingen, Germany to discuss the controversy and they have demanded that the two bodies, one buried in the Castagnavizza convent in Slovenia, the other in Hildburghausen, north of Nuremberg, be exhumed. In 2005, a ‘union of interest’ was formed with the hope of discovering the truth. A contemporary play, Marriage at Heidegg, about a filmmaker meeting the ghost of Marie-Thérèse as the Dark Countess, was performed at Heidegg Castle, which overlooks Lake Baldegg in Switzerland. In 2006, Die Frau mit den Seidenaugen by Guido Dieckmann, another fictionalized account of the switch theory, was published. And public interest in this controversy, it seems, is far from on the wane. Attendance at the Ingelfingen symposium has increased dramatically and the convention itself is now broadcast on European radio. In 2007, a nine-month jubilee to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of ‘the Dark Count and Countess’ was celebrated in the town of Hildburghausen.
There is also a third theory that needs to be considered. According to official French records, Ernestine de Lambriquet married a widower named Jean-Charles-Germain Prempain in Paris on December 7, 1810, and died in Passy, a Parisian suburb, on December 30, 1813, leaving no children of her own. Three months after her alleged demise, the Bourbons were restored to the throne and returned to Paris. The cemetery in Passy was destroyed in 1819.
In 1979, French historian Robert Ambelain published his Crimes et Secrets d’État 1785–1830, in which he provided documentary evidence that Ernestine de Lambriquet had, in fact, married and died in a suburb of Paris. On December 7, 1810, in the presence of two imperial notaries, Marie-Philippine de Lambriquet – ‘Ernestine’ – married Prempain. The official death certificate number ‘41561 n. 2745’, states, according to Ambelain: ‘the Mayor of Passy, arrondissement of Saint Denis, department of the Seine declared that on December 31, 1813, at nine o’clock in the morning, in Passy, dead at age thirty-five years, daughter of Jacques Lambriquet and Marie-Philippine Noirot, his wife, both deceased, married to Jean-Charles-Germain Prempain, proprietor … signed: Amavet.’
Ambelain wrote that he had seen the handwriting on the marriage certificate and it did not in any way match that of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte. If, in fact, Ernestine de Lambriquet was the illegitimate child of King Louis XVI, and therefore of no political consequence, she could have quite easily remained in France without threat throughout the reign of Napoleon I.
Had there been a conspiracy, a charade? If there had been, who were the players? After having pieced together the protagonists at the border of France at the time that Madame Royale was exchanged for prisoners, it was clear that, other than Marie-Thérèse’s traveling companions, only Bacher, the representative of the Directory, had close enough access to Marie-Thérèse to have affected a switch. The Austrians did not even see Marie-Thérèse until Switzerland; the Comte de Provence and his minions were miles away without permission to approach. There would have been nothing for the Directory to gain in organizing such a scheme and, if it had, at the time of the Bourbon restoration it would certainly have been to Napoleon’s advantage to reveal such a fraud.
I wanted scientific proof, the kind of proof provided by Dr Jean-Jacques Cassiman concerning the heart of the Dauphin. I contacted an old friend, Prince Charles-Henri de Lobkowicz, the great-great-great-great-grandson of King Charles X and great-great-grandson of Princess Louise, sister of Henri, Comte de Chambord. Prince Charles-Henri offered me unprecedented access to private family letters and a parcel containing a lock of hair. The hand-writing on the parcel was confirmed to be that of the Comte de Chambord. His notation states that the lock of hair within had been taken from the head of the ‘Duchesse d’Angoulême’ and the date ‘1830’ recorded. The packet had been preserved by the Comte de Chambord and, subsequently, his heirs. We turned over a portion of the lock of this hair to the team headed by Dr Jean-Jacques Cassiman, but unfortunately their results were inconclusive because the DNA in the sample had disintegrated.
I still hoped for a scientific resolution to our mystery. Dr Cassiman suggested that I obtain a tooth or a bone. As a Professor of Comparative Literature and author, I had never dreamed that my work would lead me to a place where I would even entertain the thought of opening graves to help perform experiments. I began with the Bourbon grave in Gorizia and casually asked Prince Charles-Henri if we could open it and maybe borrow a tooth. When I learned more about the ‘Saint-Denis in exile’ royal crypt at the bucolic convent Castagnavizza in Slovenia, I discovered that it had been the scene of incredibly bloody battles of the First World War, so horrific that the area actually became known as the ‘Isonzo Front’. In order to safeguard the graves of the last of the Bourbons, Empress Zita of Austria, herself a Bourbon-Parme, had arranged for the caskets to be moved. After a nearly twenty-year exile, they were subsequently returned to Gorizia in 1932.
The removal of the caskets led to another controversy. Those who believe in an ongoing conspiracy believe that the bodies of the Dark Countess of Hildburghausen and the false Duchesse d’Angoulême were switched at some point in time when the caskets from Gorizia were being transported to Vienna. Although those espousing this theory can offer no substantiation of time or day, their strength of conviction that there has been some cover-up made me suspect that even if I could offer proof from the Gorizia grave, it would not be acceptable to many.
In his delightful travel book Dunkelgräfin, Kahlbutz & Co., published in 2006, Reiner Hammeran journeys throughout Germany to follow the legend of the ‘Dark
Count’. He proposes that the lore of the ‘Dunkel-gräfin’ is so pervasive a phenomenon and so ingrained in the German mythology that one could visit almost every town in Germany – and Hammeran made it to twenty-seven of those villages – where the tale of a mysterious count ensconced in a castle persists to this day. The Hildburghausen legacy, which coincides with the birth of German Romanticism in that very area, relates specifically to the story of the switch of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France. There could be no story more emblematic of the Zeitgeist of the Frühromantik, the early German Romantic movement that took root right in the vicinity of Hildburghausen, than the Dark Count holding captive in his mysterious castle the daughter of the murdered Most Christian King. The strong motif of the doppelgänger, a hallmark of the Romantic epoch, also distinguishes this story.
The Hildburghausen Museum still houses ‘Dark Countess’ artifacts, and has its own website that states ‘the secrets surrounding the mysterious Dark Countess attract many guests from Germany and abroad’. I contacted the Mayor of Hildburghausen to find out about the grave marked by a headstone that reads ‘Sophie Botta’. As it turned out, the grave in Hildburghausen is on town property and scientific examination could, in fact, proceed with approval of the Mayor and town council. After having corresponded and spoken with the Mayor, it was clear that I was not going to receive permission for Dr Cassiman and his team to perform DNA testing. The reason, though not expressly stated, was apparent. Hildburghausen, a tiny village that was for years behind the Iron Curtain, receives much of its income from tourism owing to this mystery; the people are in no hurry to put to bed this controversy. It is simply good for business.
It was clear that we needed to pursue other methods in order to solve the two-hundred-year-old mystery about the fate of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France. I felt that what I had learned about her character offered me sufficient proof; she was the same strong, young woman in Vienna when she confronted the Holy Roman Emperor as she was in the Temple Prison when she refused to speak with her jailers. Yet, she could also be sweet and most virtuous. All of these qualities, which defined the young Marie-Thérèse, the ‘Mousseline Sérieuse’, as her mother called her, delineated a unique blend of traits that indicated, to me, a singular character.
The next obvious choice was to search for girls named ‘Sophie Botta’ born in Europe who would have been the same age as Madame Royale. There was one such girl born in Landau, a town in Alsace, on November 25, 1779. Not only would that have made her both French and German speaking, it would also have placed the day of the Hildburghausen death on exactly the girl’s fifty-eighth birthday, the age marked on the tomb. This ‘Sophie Botta’, however, perished at only four years of age. To date, it has not been possible to locate any other girls born in Europe of the appropriate or approximate age who were named ‘Sophie Botta’ at birth.
I needed to locate letters that could be authenticated as having been written by Marie-Thérèse. One would have to be a letter written before she left the Temple Prison and before there was any possibility of a switch; the others would have to exhibit the same penmanship. I raked the archives and private collections from Russia to Sicily in search of the evidence. Here, I offer two handwriting samples: the first, a fragment of a poem written by Marie-Thérèse in the Temple Prison during the winter of 1794, which I have quoted from in Chapter XI.
Handwriting Sample 1. Poem written in the Temple Prison (given by the family of Madame de Chanterenne to the Comte de Chambord).
The second is the letter that Marie-Thérèse wrote to Madame de Chanterenne from the Hôtel du Corbeau detailing her escape from the Temple Prison on the arm of Monsieur Bénézech and her journey toward the frontier. Discussed in Chapter XII, this letter was penned on Christmas Day, 1795, and is incontestably from the same hand as the one that wrote the poem in the Temple Prison.
Handwriting Sample 2. Excerpt of letter from Marie-Thérèse to Madame de Chanterenne, December 25, 1795 (given by the family of Madame de Chanterenne to the Comte de Chambord).
Once Marie-Thérèse arrived in Vienna, many of the letters that she wrote her family members and friends were intercepted and copied by the Austrian Imperial police and therefore none of the letters held in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv are in her own handwriting. One private note, however, that Marie-Thérèse personally handed to her guardian, Madame de Chanclos, dated September 13, 1796, was not intercepted by the Emperor’s agents, and is offered here as the third example of Madame Royale’s own handwriting. This sample demonstrates that the person living in Vienna was the same as the person writing from Huningue, France. The letter to Madame de Chanclos, which was on the back of a drawing, has been in the possession of the family of the Count Coronini-Cronberg in Gorizia since the 1840s. It was in Gorizia that Marie-Thérèse resided for nine years along with her dwindling entourage, which included the Vicomtesse d’Agoult, Madame de Chanclos’s niece.
Handwriting Sample 3. Letter from Marie-Thérèse to Madame de Chanclos, September 13, 1796 (Fondazione Palazzo Coronini Cronbergonlus, Gorizia, Italy).
The fourth piece of evidence is the April 9, 1804 letter that Marie-Thérèse wrote to her cousin, the Prince de Condé, which I have quoted from in Chapter XVII. The handwriting in this letter of condolence from the Archives Nationales de France in Paris matches that of the other three.
We know that both in the tower and on her journey from the Temple Prison, Madame Royale was permitted neither secretary nor servant, and that she wrote the poem and her letter to her ‘dear Renète’ in her own hand. The other two letters shown here are also in her own hand and not of the calligraphic quality attributed to professional amanuenses. In addition, taking into consideration the alteration of vision and dexterity that comes with age, their brushstrokes are the same that appear in letters penned by Marie-Thérèse from the early Bourbon Restoration, many years later, as well as those she wrote into the late 1840s, provided to me by Prince Charles-Henri de Lobkowicz.
Letter from Marie-Thérèse to the Prince de Condé, April 9, 1804 (Centre historique des Archives nationals, Paris, 34AP7#10. Cliché Atelier photographique du Centre historique des Archives nationales, Paris).
In contrast, an excerpt from a note written on September 22, 1808, by the ‘Dark Countess’ to her protector, wishing him a ‘Happy Birthday’ and signed ‘Sophie’, bears absolutely no resemblance to any of the missives signed ‘Marie-Thérèse’.
As Ernestine de Lambriquet lived in Paris throughout the Napoleonic era, and all of the letters written by Marie-Thérèse provide substantiation that Madame Royale did, indeed, marry her cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême and went on to become Dauphine and Queen of France, who, then, was the woman, believed to be the daughter of the King, so mysteriously veiled in Hildburghausen? The fact that she possessed items engraved or embroidered with the recognizable fleur-de-lys or pieces of jewelry that may have belonged to Marie Antoinette is insufficient as we know the murdered Queen’s belongings made their way via auctions and antique dealers all around the world. After I had asked Dr Jean-Jacques Cassiman to perform the DNA testing on the hair labeled ‘Duchesse d’Angoulême’ that was in the possession of Prince Charles-Henri, the Prince went even further in the name of friendship, pulling out some of his own hair so that we could study as well his mitochondrial Bourbon DNA. Those results, successfully documented by Dr Cassiman, might assist in other studies. In other words, if someone were to step forward claiming to be a Bourbon, we now have the proper sequencing with which to compare DNA. If the ‘Dark Countess of Hildburghausen’ was indeed a member of the Bourbon family, the DNA is now available to verify this assertion, and, although she may well have been a Bourbon, she was not, however, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, daughter of Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of France.
Acknowledgements
This book could not have been written without: the love, support and great tolerance of Hadley and Jon Nagel; the help and encouragement of His Serene Highness, Prince Charles-Henri de Lobkowic
z; and the singular Tina Bennett, my personal and professional OnStar.
Thank you to my wise and talented editor, Colin Dickerman; the beautiful and very thorough Lindsay Sagnette; and the rest of the US Bloomsbury team – Laura Keefe, Natalie Slocum, Sabrina Farber, Michael O’Connor, and Gary J. Antonetti and his staff at Ortelius Design. As they all know, this book would certainly not have taken its full shape without the tenacity and brilliance of Michael Fishwick at Bloomsbury UK and Kate Johnson. Thank you also to Trâm-Anh Doan, Emily Sweet and the rest of the fastidious, hard-working bunch at Bloomsbury UK.
I am eternally grateful to Leila and the late, wonderful Hank Luce for their extraordinary kindness, and to a young Sorbonne student, Maialen Berasategui (who has a superb website, http://madameroyale.free.fr). Others who have also been exceedingly generous with their help have been the fantastic Delphine Renaut; the brilliant and scholarly Christophe Levantal; the extraordinarily knowledgeable historian Philip Mansel; the indefatigable and dedicated David Smith of the New York Public Library; and the very knowledgeable, kind and patient Tammy Wofsey of the Marymount Manhattan College Shanahan Library.
A million thanks to: Svetlana Katz; Thomas Meyhöfer (and his fascinating website www.madame-royale.de); Marc de Gontaut Biron; Stefan Ottrubay of the Esterházy family; Clementina di Levetzow Lantieri; Dr Serenella Ferrari Benedetti of the Fondazione Coronini Cronberg; Dr Leopold Auer and Dr Ernst Petretsch at the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv; Peter Prokop at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek; Dr Jean-Jacques Cassiman; Wayne Furman for the use of the Allen Room at the New York Public Library; Paul LeClerc, President of the New York Public Library, and his assistant, Elaine Cunningham; Jason Baumann and Elizabeth Novelo, also of the NYPL; Claudia Solacini, the New York Society Library and Sara Elliott Holliday; New York City District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and Martha Bashford in the DA’s office; David Linton and Cecilia Feilla of the Humanities Department at Marymount Manhattan College; Paul Smart with the Church of the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah; and Christine Kohl-Langer of the Archiv und Museum in Landau, Germany.