Marie Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny, & Perpetual Motion

by John Biggs

  Back in Stockholm, Fersen observed that when he entered the opera, everyone turned to look at him. He was thirty-nine now. His hair had begun to whiten, and his brow to furrow. When the dauphin Louis-Charles died in the Temple prison the following year, Fersen was at his country property in Stenige. The boy’s death severed Fersen’s final connection to the country that had brought him so much happiness and pain. “He was the last and only interest remaining to me in France. The news is too painful to bear and it brings back memories that are heartrending.”

  Breguet knew that with Marie-Antoinette dead, Fersen would no longer want to proceed with the commission of the 160. But the watchmaker was determined to continue. The watch might have lost its meaning as a token of deep and clandestine love, but now it would serve another end, as a grand canvas for Breguet’s artistry.

  In France, the revolutionaries had consumed themselves. The Reign of Terror was over, the Jacobins disbanded. In the spring of 1795, Breguet received a letter from Boulanger. It was safe, Boulanger wrote, for the master to return to Paris.

  As the century turned, Fersen and Breguet were moving along starkly different paths. They no longer had occasion to see or write to one another. Fersen had seemed to wash his hands of the watch, of France, of anything at all that might remind him of the tragedy of his love.

  By the end of 1803, Fersen had settled in Sweden permanently, at peace with his position and his place there. He held large soupers for hundreds of people and was happy to find, when the French legation arrived, that many “had forgotten old France,” freeing him however briefly from the bonds of his past. His chef recorded preparing almost daily “at least 15 dishes to serve, sometimes 20, other times 30 or 40,” an abundant feast for the once almost ascetic Fersen. Traces of his old wit remained, as when he complained that Swedes went to bed far too early and that “this is what makes all the women fat, wrinkled, and old before their time.”

  He had fewer love affairs than before. One was with a twenty-six-year-old beauty named Emelie Aurora De Geer, but little came of their constant letters back and forth. Fersen, now fifty-one and more rugged than handsome, was a bit too proper for the young woman’s taste. Danish King Christian VIII, an old friend of Fersen’s from his time on the continent, noted in 1803 that “sorrow and misfortune have aged him so that he looks twenty years older than he is.”101 His niece described him as possessing, by this time, a distant hauteur that “covered his inner emptiness.”

  The next two years brought a change in continental feeling toward Napoleon Bonaparte and the new French Empire. As Britain, Prussia, and Russia fired up their war machines against burgeoning French expansion, Sweden’s Gustav IV began calling for war against the emperor and a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.

  As time went on, Fersen seemed to drift out of favor. He spent little time in Stockholm, visiting Uppsala occasionally on official business but rarely being summoned to meet with the king. One contemporary wrote that Fersen “busied himself with entertaining, seeing how his horses were looked after, sometimes himself driving an excellent team, sometimes riding.”102 He lived the life of a country gentleman possessed of the discipline and propriety on which Fersen prided himself.

  Around March of 1808, a new cautiousness seems to have overtaken Fersen. The entries in his diary, once voluminous, start to taper off, and his sister wrote that Fersen burned “a number of papers,” deepening the mystery.

  On May 28, 1810, while practicing cavalry maneuvers in the beech forests of Skåne, about 340 miles from Stockholm, the new crown prince fell from his saddle and died immediately. The cause was almost certainly a stroke, but back in Stockholm a different narrative began to weave itself into the minds of the populace. The crown prince who had, in a sense, deposed the old king was gone, and the prime suspects were a group of “counterrevolutionaries” supposedly led by Fersen and Sophie. They were suspected of poisoning the Dane. Murder by poison was a fairly common accusation in an era when common ailments could strike a person dead in a few hours.

  Was there any truth to the rumors? Almost certainly not. But there had been talk of Fersen displaying “coldness” toward the new “prince of the mob.” And Fersen and his circle stood to gain by the reinstatement of Gustav IV as king. These were the dots flimsily connected by an agitated public.

  Within two weeks of Christian’s death, popular pamphlets were calling for “The People, August’s Avenger,” to rise up against the counterrevolutionaries. Two days later, a sailor stationed near Stockholm’s southern sluicegate reported that the people were prepared to take up arms “against those they believe had poisoned the crown prince, and they have decided to murder Count Fersen just at the time of the prince’s funeral” and then attack “many other distinguished persons who it is claimed did not love the prince.”103

  The funeral was scheduled for the twentieth of June, and Fersen returned to the capital on the nineteenth, ignoring the warnings of his friends and family. As the country’s grand marshall, he was expected to lead the coffin to the cemetery. Stubbornly, Fersen refused to turn down his position in the cortege, lest his absence imply guilt. While Fersen dined in Stockholm that night, more pamphlets were circulating, calling for a “Fox Hunt” at the funeral.104

  On the twentieth, as Fersen rolled down a long avenue on the western shore of Stockholm’s Old Town, he found his carriage under attack. According to one general in attendance, the grand marshall was riding in a large state coach driven by six white horses with “red morocco harnesses” and “richly ornamented with gilded bronze,” notable because the crown prince’s hearse was simply covered by a black canopy “dusty after the journey.”

  “He looked like a triumphant conqueror dragging behind him a defeated foe,” the General wrote later.

  The long procession moved quietly, until it reached Stora Nygatan, a thin, cobbled avenue lined by sharp-peaked three-story houses that opened onto Riddarhuset Square. There, with the heat of the day rising as Fersen passed, a crowd began to chant “Murderer.” Finally, the police asked Fersen and his driver to turn off the processional route to Riddarhustorget, south of the royal palace and close to the local police station. Witnesses would recall Fersen “sitting pale as death in the most frightful fear and distress.”

  Suddenly, rocks shattered the carriage windows, and the crowd surged forward, nearly toppling Fersen’s coach. Fersen managed to take refuge in a tavern called Hultgren’s, a small inn on the second floor of a building on Stora Nygatan. But the crowd rushed up the stairs, surrounded Fersen, accused him of causing the French Revolution, and claimed he was trying to duplicate it in Sweden. They began to strip him of his regalia, tearing off his medals, sword, and coat and throwing them in a bundle out into the street below.

  Authorities soon arrived and were able to negotiate a safe passage for Fersen out to the street. But there, when he appeared, the crowd called for blood. As Fersen passed out through the doors he was heard to say: “I see that it will soon be my last hour.”

  The police brought him to a room in Riddarhuset Square, a noble-looking building clad in white plaster and outlined in black. A police garrison was nearby, and the building promised sanctuary. But again the crowd followed, tearing the door down and rushing in.

  The hundreds of soldiers who were also in the funeral procession watched the whole spectacle, and the police surely looked down upon it from their barracks, but no one in power lifted a finger. “One is almost tempted to say that the government wanted to give the people a victim to play with,” a contemporary of Fersen’s later wrote, “just as when one throws something to an irritated wild beast to distract its attention.”

  The mob dragged Fersen from the room and threw him to the ground outside. A group of more responsible members of the mob tried to lead him out of the square and toward the courtyard of the Royal Palace. But there, his guards were overwhelmed, and he was trampled and kicked by his countrymen. For more than an hour, his body was beaten and savaged. Finally, a Finnish seaman named O
tto Tandefelt stomped on Fersen’s ribs, crushing his chest and his silver soldier’s watch. That evening, sixteen years, eight months, and four days after the death of his beloved, Fersen was pronounced dead.

  Even when Breguet heard the news about Fersen, he did not stop working on the 160. Breguet’s last living link to the Bourbon monarchy and the great commission of 1783 was gone. But he continued to assemble the watch, slowly.

  He was busier than ever. Two days earlier, on June 8, 1810, Breguet had delivered the world’s first wristwatch. The recipient was Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples and sister of Napoleon I. The Number 2639 was simply a small pocket watch, but it had two lugs – essentially loops of metal on the top and bottom that could be tied down with a ribbon. This miniscule watch, made as a one-off novelty, would redefine watchmaking in the next century. Because the watch could be worn around the wrist, it was unobtrusive and ensured that the queen would not have to fish in her bustle or bag for her pocketwatch. This wristwatch – a form of horological design that didn’t reappear until the early twentieth century – was essentially a precursor to every modern watch made. The size, the shape, and the method of wearing were all far ahead of their time.

  With the business running smoothly and his assistants handling matters of finance, he was now free to tinker and create, and he built his watches one after the other, making a few hundred a year. In 1802, competing against firms from across Napoleon’s far-flung empire, Breguet had won a gold medal at the French Industrial Exhibit at the Louvre, a show comprised almost entirely of French luxury items that one British visitor described as “not having a single item of ordinary consumption on display.”105 Competing against over five hundred famous French silk-, tapestry-, and porcelain-makers as well as vintners and distillers of fine brandy, Breguet’s small firm and famous watches were right at home in the luxurious confines of the show grounds. The Exposition was immensely popular, and it was moved from the Champ de Mars (then “waste” lands outside of the city) and eventually included 1,422 exhibitors in 1806, all flogging France’s most luxurious doo-dads.106

  Breguet and his fellow watchmakers showed off their precision pieces, including astronomical and marine chronometers and Breguet’s unique “tact” watch, which could be read by rubbing a finger over the closed case. Afterward, Breguet was invited to a dinner where Napoleon was present, but the watchmaker did not speak to him. Napoleon had turned against the royal-friendly Breguet, boycotting his wares. The fickle emperor wouldn’t resume his purchases from Breguet until 1805.

  The 1806 Industrial Exhibit was Breguet’s watershed. At this event, he competed against old pupils and rivals, including Louis Berthoud, but they weren’t prepared for the masterwork up his sleeve. Breguet had patented his tourbillon on June 26, 1801, naming it after the French term Descartes used to describe “whirling planetary systems,”107 but it had its public coming out at the 1806 trade show. It was the most complex single mechanism (horologists have never called this a complication, per se) ever attempted.

  Breguet continued to innovate. Three years after he completed the world’s first wristwatch, in 1813 he finished the Sommariva, a watch for Comte Giovanni Battista Sommariva, a onetime barber’s assistant who had grown up to become an important barrister in the revolutionary courts. The watch, really a watch and a clock, consisted of a complex watch complete with tourbillon, equation of time, annual calendar, and chronometer, along with a complex clock with a tourbillon. Breguet himself described the piece as his “highest achievement” – the 160 had not been finished yet – and the Sommariva had a peculiar feature. A small, tilted rotating platform on the top of the clock held the watch and turned it in three-minute long revolutions. A small reservoir of oil inside the watch held old lubricants and washed the gears anew in fresh lubricants. This way, the watch never “settled” or stuck. The watch itself was lost in a fire in Sommariva’s palace, and only scant descriptions remain.

  As the years passed, more and more prestige accrued to Breguet. Even as Napoleon had ignored him at the dinner in 1802, Breguet’s presence there placed him in the pantheon of great French scientists and made him a number of connections in the burgeoning science of telegraphy.

  The growing recognition of Breguet led to intrigue and backstabbing. In November 1806, his enemies spread a rumor that he had died in a coach accident, resulting in all of his Swiss suppliers refusing to ship watch parts to the company. Breguet had to again invite various important members of the French and Swiss watchmaking industries to his shop to show that he was very much alive.

  Breguet received a string of accolades. He was named a member of the Office of Longitudes. In 1815, he was presented with the Legion of Honor medal, available only to French nationals, by king Louis XVIII, which must have evoked striking connotations and memories for the aging Breguet. His long struggle to be recognized as both a watchmaker and a French citizen was complete. That October, he achieved the highest honor for a watchmaker under France’s new constitutional monarchy, when he was given the official commission to become Horologer to the Royal Navy. Breguet succeeded Louis Berthoud, the same watchmaker who, it was suspected, had put him out of his workshop during the Revolution. The horologer to kings was now horologer to another king, Louis XVIII, uncle to Marie-Antoinette’s son, Louis XVII, the dauphin.

  The commission was not lucrative at first. The title was becoming increasingly outdated, as new navigation techniques, including rudimentary ship-to-shore communication systems using semaphore flags, were beginning to develop. And Berthoud’s factory would still be completing and delivering already ordered new chronometers for another six years. Finally, Breguet was able to make his first delivery, of twenty-two chronometers, the clocks he fabricated went to private individuals, including sea captains, and he published a small book instructing sailors as to their use and upkeep. His large, white-dialed timepieces became well-known in port cities for their durability and legibility. One striking example, the 2741, was made in 1813 and belonged to Monseigneur Belmas, Bishop of Cambrai, who received it from Breguet as a gift. The clock, encased in a dark wooden box, had a white face with a guilloche dial and even an early stopwatch. It featured two separate mainsprings, along with two reserves de marche to show the energy left in the springs.

  Like most marine chronometers, this one was connected to brass gimbals, which kept the clock flat even in violent seas. Every chronometer box was inscribed: Breguet et Fils, Horloger de la Marine Royale. This one bore an additional inscription, Pour Mr Belmas ami de l’auteur – for a friend of the creator.108

  Breguet was also finally inducted into the Academy of Science, replacing Berthoud as representative of the horological sciences, a position that Napoleon had blocked him from in 1796 and 1807 for political reasons. Membership fulfilled one of Breguet’s lifelong goals. Here, Breguet was among equals. The members, whose number included mathematicians, engineers, and biologists, would meet regularly to discuss new inventions and discoveries and publish papers on, for instance, the reduction of “overturning accidents by public carriages.” (Breguet was a coauthor.) Breguet did joint research with “his old friend the mathematician Prony, the loyal architect of his successive election attempts,” a historian would write, “on the regulation and length of oscillations of pendulums, the mathematician providing the theory, formulae, and calculations, while the watchmaker made the pendulums for their experiments.”

  The academy’s ornate building, almost a miniature Versailles in scope, became Breguet’s second home, and he visited as often as he could. There were endless things to look at. The academy was a kind of wunderkammer, with mirrors and globes and the skeletons of men and beasts hanging from the walls. A taxidermied ermine watched vigilantly from the corner of one room while members debated the finer points of engineering and explored early experiments in electricity, communication, and horology. The old man attended Academy meetings regularly, reveling in his new position, and he was a familiar figure at the museums and symposiums on science and eng
ineering. After decades of assiduous work, he was finally being treated less like a tradesman and more like a scientist.

  Breguet was now such a renowned personage that, starting around 1819, a watchmaker named Moinet came to the workshops and spent two years poring over firm records and documenting the history of the house. Moinet’s book, a mish-mash of technical data and history, did not do justice to the firm’s rich history, but it was a start. Through his work, many theoretical descriptions destroyed in the revolution were restored, and many of the business practices that had made Breguet famous came to light.

  The Bishop of Cambrai — for whom Breguet also built the first pocket watch with a crystal back, to better show the movement — wrote in 1821 that the workshop, like Breguet’s watches, was like “a crowd of people shut up in a tiny house, living in peace and working efficiently together to create good order.” Moinet’s book also showed that Breguet was active on the Ile, assisting the needy and playing his part as a community leader during the Revolution and after.

  Breguet’s influence was felt in other ways, for his ingenuity had extended to inventions beyond the realm of simple timekeeping. His “musical chronometer,” which kept perfect time and could be slowed down or sped up by a musician wishing to set the tempo for a piece of music, would enter the standard conductor’s repertoire as the metronome. Although the original idea seems to have come from the delightfully named Dr. Crotch in the late 1600s, Breguet exhibited his own version of the device at the Paris Exhibition on the Champs de Mars in 1794, and Ludwig van Beethoven, after learning of it from his friend the inventor Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, quickly created a little ditty based on its repetitive ticking. The resulting song ended up in the second movement of the composer’s 8th Symphony.