Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars

by Elena Maria Vidal

  Maria Antonia, who was thirteen years Mimi’s junior, came to loathe her [elder] sister whose bossy, high-handed ways and intellectual snobbishness left her with a permanent suspicious dread of what would later be termed ‘bluestocking’. For the rest of her life, Maria Antonia would eschew the company of intellectually sophisticated women, such as the cultivated and delightfully louche salonnières of Paris, in favor of what she regarded as more straightforward and much less challenging companions, who shared her own interests….26

  Mimi and Albert were eventually driven out of the Netherlands by Napoleon, managing to salvage their remarkable art collection. Sadly, Mimi lost her only child to death. With her husband and child, she was buried in the Capuchin crypt in Vienna with the rest of the Habsburgs.

  Archduchess Maria Elisabeth (1743-1808), called “Liesl,” was lovely but like Mimi also had a sharp tongue. She was supposed to have gone to France to marry Louis XV but was prevented not only by Louis’ mistress Madame du Barry but by an attack of smallpox, which disfigured her. This was tragic on more than one level. How helpful it would have been for Antoine to have an older sister at Versailles who was already Queen of France! Instead, Antoine had to face the French court practically alone and without her family. Meanwhile, Liesl became fat and crabby; Joseph eventually expelled her from the Imperial court, as he did all his sisters. She went to live with La Marianne and discovered a religious vocation, becoming an Abbess.

  Archduke Charles Joseph (1745-1761) was a clever, handsome boy who knew just how clever and handsome he was. His parents adored him. He was determined to oust his elder brother Joseph from the succession and become Holy Roman Emperor himself someday. It never happened for he died from smallpox when not quite sixteen. He is reported to have said to his weeping mother: “You should not weep for me, dear mother, for had I lived, I would have brought you many more tears!” 27 His words, no doubt, were true.

  Archduchess Maria Amalia (1746-1804) had a stubborn disposition and was the only daughter who refused to even pretend to follow her mother’s advice after she was married. She was therefore shunned by the Empress, although her younger sisters were quite fond of her. Considered one of the prettiest sisters in a family of beauties, she had been determined to marry the man she loved the way Mimi had. Maria Theresa, having recovered her strength of mind, would not hear of it. Instead Amalia had to marry Ferdinand of Parma, another grandson of Louis XV. They had several children although they both cheated on each other, and Amalia later behaved so badly people thought she was mad. Maria Theresa worried that the rumors about Amalia would make it to France and soil Antoine’s reputation; indeed it may have contributed to the French people’s readiness to believe anything unsavory about their Queen. As a widow, Amalia was driven out of Parma by Napoleon’s army and sought refuge in Bohemia, where she died in Prague in 1804.

  Leopold II (1747-1792), called “Poldy,” is often overlooked because his reign lasted only two years. Nevertheless, he had the most children of any of his siblings—sixteen, just like his parents—with the exception of Maria Carolina, who had eighteen. He stood in as proxy bridegroom at some of his sisters’ weddings. Although his demeanor is described as being cold and intellectual, he was by far the handsomest of his surviving brothers and quite the ladies’ man. His parents had intended for him to become a priest but as he approached manhood it became clear that he did not have a vocation. He eventually married Maria Luisa of Spain, the sweet pious mother of his sixteen children, the oldest of whom, Francis II, was to be the last Holy Roman Emperor. While Leopold displayed concern in his letters to Antoinette for her safety and that of her family, as the violence of the French Revolution escalated, he was not displeased to see the French monarchy destabilized. His son and heir would be much less concerned. It was only when the revolutionary government showed itself to be belligerent that Francis II realized that a Pandora’s Box had been opened and the Habsburg Empire was threatened. Leopold’s sudden and unexpected death in 1792 at age 45 stirred up rumors of poison. Antoinette felt his loss greatly.

  The children considered part of the younger set of Habsburg siblings begins after Leopold, and includes Maria Johanna, Maria Josepha, Maria Carolina, Ferdinand Charles, Maria Antonia and Maximilian Francis. By the time the six last children came along, Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis Stephen were no longer as vigilant in making certain that their orders were followed and that their offspring were receiving the education and discipline they needed. There was no trouble, however, with Archduchess Maria Johanna (1750-1762) and Archduchess Maria Josepha (1751-1767), sweet and docile girls who were being brought up together. Then Johanna contracted a virulent case of smallpox after receiving an inoculation, which was known to occur. She died at age twelve, much to her family’s horror, especially Josepha’s. But soon Josepha was being groomed to marry Ferdinand of Naples and being painted in honor of the occasion, for she would become a queen. There is at least one portrait of Josepha in blue which is often mistaken for Antoinette; they both possessed the same delicate winsomeness so it is an easy mistake to make. Before Josepha embarked for Naples, she followed the custom of Habsburg brides and went with her mother to pray in the family vault in the Capuchin crypt. She fell ill with smallpox shortly thereafter; the Empress was convinced that it was because the tomb of Joseph’s second wife, Josepha of Bavaria, who had recently died of the same dread disease, had not been sealed properly. This is probably not the case, since Josepha’s rash appeared a mere two days after her visit to the crypt, and the incubation period for smallpox is usually about a week. 28 Josepha died on the day she was supposed to have left to be married, and her younger sister Maria Carolina was chosen to go in her place.

  Archduke Ferdinand (1754-1806) took over the job of being the bridegroom at his sisters’ proxy marriages after Leopold married and moved away. He himself was betrothed at age nine to Maria Beatrice d’Este, the only child and heir of the Duke of Modena. The couple was married in 1771 and thus Ferdinand became the founder of the House of Austria-Este. He and Maria Beatrice had ten children. He was granted the rule of Lombardy and they moved to Milan where they lived until Napoleon invaded. Ferdinand died in 1806; he never ruled in Modena but his oldest son did after the defeat of Napoleon.

  Archduchess Maria Carolina (1752-1814), known as “Charlotte” in her family, was the sister closest to Antoine due to the fact that they were reared together by Countess Lerchenfeld and later by Countess Brandeis. Charlotte was the least pretty of the girls but the most like her mother in intelligence, temperament and political acumen. Even as Johanna and Josepha were well-behaved, Charlotte and Antoine were a pair of disobedient scamps, with Charlotte leading Antoine into all kinds of mischief and unruly behavior. Their antics came to an end in 1767, when it was decided to divide the two, as their mimicry and giggling were causing a stir at court. 29 Furthermore, Charlotte had to prepare to take Josepha’s place as the bride of Ferdinand of Naples. She had originally been told she was to marry the Dauphin but now it was urgent that an Archduchess be sent to fill Josepha’s place in Naples. The sisters, who never saw each other again after Charlotte left for Naples as Queen Maria Carolina, were heartbroken to be separated. It was particularly traumatic for Antoine, to whom Charlotte had been like a second little mother, and ever after she tried to recapture the relationship with her women friends. After Charlotte arrived in her new kingdom she wrote home about her dreadful wedding night and how being intimate with her new husband was a martyrdom.30 Her experiences may have influenced Antoine to have a fearful view of marital relations. The marriage produced eighteen children and Maria Carolina eventually gained the upper hand with her husband. The sisters corresponded in Italian until Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned in the Temple, and even then Lady Hamilton, a close friend of the Queen of Naples, was able to bring messages back and forth between them.

  Although Maria Carolina’s life was not as tragic as her younger sister’s, it was equally tumultuous. Like Antoinette, she was unpopular wit
h her people. She dabbled in freemasonry and liberalism, turning against them when she heard of the violence of the French Revolution. From the surviving Mesdames de France, who came to see her after their escape, she heard details about some of Antoinette’s ordeals. She did everything she could to withstand Napoleon and the Revolution, but ended her days in exile in Vienna, the last of Maria Theresa’s children to die, in 1814. Three women in Maria Carolina’s family were to marry into France. Her favorite granddaughter Marie-Louise of Austria became Empress of the French, and another granddaughter, her namesake Caroline of Naples, married the Duc de Berry. Her daughter Marie-Amélie married Louis-Philippe d’Orléans and became Queen of the French in 1830.

  Our heroine, the Archduchess Maria Antonia (1755-1793), our Antoine, was not a great beauty like some of her older sisters but she was one of the girls most like the Empress. Her loveliness was in her graceful movements and in the charm of her personality. There had been no particular plans for Antoine’s marriage—she was seen as an extra daughter—until Josepha died. Since Charlotte had to go Naples in Josepha’s place, Antoine would have to go to France in Charlotte’s place. When the Empress discovered that her youngest daughter was half-literate at age thirteen, it created a major crisis, and a bevy of tutors and beauty professionals rushed to the Hofburg to make the wild little Archduchess into a Dauphine. If she had married a prince of the empire and died quietly in her bed, then she would not be any better known than her sisters are. But because she married the Dauphin of France, with whom she was to share “the most beautiful crown in the world” 31 she became the most famous, or infamous, of them all.

  As mentioned earlier, Antoinette was more like her mother than most people realize. They both loved dancing, riding, interior decorating, sleigh-riding and the simple joys of family life. Antoinette imitated her mother’s refusal to drink alcohol. They both loved fresh air: in Vienna, the courtiers froze from the palace windows being opened in the dead of winter, which Maria Theresa insisted would prevent consumption. It seems the Empress did all the things she would later scold her daughter for, including mitigating etiquette, and ignoring convention. Maria Theresa used her frequent pregnancies as an excuse to modify the rules or escape them completely. Her close friends were exempt from etiquette and she made exceptions for people she liked: she had her old governess buried in the Capuchin crypt with the Habsburgs. She made herself accessible to her subjects, calling them “her children” and going among them incognito. How Antoinette would be scolded for doing the same things she had learned from watching her mother.

  Archduke Francis Maximilian (1756-1801) was destined for the Church. He became the Archbishop and Elector of Cologne and Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, among other titles. “Max,” as he was called, was an early patron and benefactor of the young Beethoven. He visited his sister Antoinette at Versailles in the 1770’s and was the occasion for diplomatic drama when the Princes of the Blood made a fuss about calling upon him. In the 1790’s he was deputized by the Pope to officiate at Imperial coronations in Frankfurt, crowning his brother Leopold II and later his nephew Francis II. Max faced ill-health and political upheavals at the turn of the century which led to his death at age 45.

  Perhaps the story of the childhood meeting of Mozart with Antoine and her family is partly apocryphal, but it has some elements worth reflecting upon. In one picture, the little Archduchess Antoine is shown leaning against her mother Empress Maria Theresa as the young prodigy is introduced. It is said that Mozart slipped and fell at one point; when Antoine ran forward to help him get up, he asked her to marry him. Mozart then ensconced himself upon the Empress’ lap, and Maria Theresa kissed him. According to Mozart biographer Otto Jahn: “He was particularly proud of the Empress’s notice. When they were encouraging him to play at a small German court, where there were to be some persons of high rank, he answered that he had played before the Empress, and was not at all afraid.” 32 Later, when the boy Mozart was taken to Versailles, he tried to kiss Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, but La Pompadour pushed him away. He asked, “Who is this that does not want to kiss me?—the Empress kissed me.”33

  The French royal family was much more welcoming than the courtesan, however. Queen Marie fed Mozart with her own hands, speaking to him in German, while her daughters kissed him and visited with his family in the royal apartments.34He was obviously a very engaging little boy, to everyone but Madame de Pompadour, that is.35

  2 The Maid of Lorraine

  “The Voice said to me: ‘Go into France!’ I could stay no longer.” —St. Joan of Arc

  Historian Chantal Thomas in her book The Wicked Queen discusses how royal princesses sent to marry in a foreign country for the sake of an alliance were no better than hostages. To quote:

  While still an adolescent, the fiancée was torn from her family, her country, her mother tongue. She found herself on enemy ground, delivered as the hostage in a pact concluded between her father and the father of her future lord and master. This traffic in foreign girls, who arrived decked out like icons and to whom all possible homages were made, was conducted with indifference and cynicism, motivated by purely political calculation. The girls were the guarantee of alliances whose stakes they did not understand. All they knew when they left their childhood homes was that they would never return…Is it possible to imagine anyone more defenseless than these young exiles, confronted by a court protocol which in itself comprised a whole new language to learn on top of French? Their faux pas were mocked, their mistakes in French and their confusion over titles mimicked…Hostage princesses slept with one eye open. At court, that bastion of honors and flattery, scene of the latest dances, a state of war was forever brewing, and they risked being its first victims at any given moment.1

  On the 21st of January, 1770, the betrothal ring arrived from France. How strange that on the same day twenty-three years later, Louis XVI would perish on the guillotine in the sight of all the people. The French ambassador the Marquis de Durfort arrived on April 16, 1770 with the official request for the hand of the Archduchess Maria Antonia from His Most Christian Majesty Louis XV. The next day, Antoine had to solemnly renounce all rights to the Austrian succession. On April 19, dressed in cloth of silver, her mother took her by hand and escorted her to the high altar of the Augustinian Church, a few steps away from the Hofburg in Vienna, to be married by proxy to the Dauphin. Her brother Archduke Ferdinand stood in for the far away Louis-Auguste. Afterwards the registry was signed; it is reported that the Empress Maria Theresa’s hand trembled as she put her signature as a seal upon her daughter’s nuptials. There is a holy card of St. John the Baptist, one of Antoinette's patron saints, which she gave to her main femme de chambre, Thérèse Durieux and her sister Barbe Durieux, as a token of farewell. The sisters were members of the Archduchess Antoine’s entourage, who are mentioned in the letters of the Empress Maria Theresa to the Marquise d’Hennezel. She was to leave the maids behind in Austria. The card was given to them on the occasion of Antoine's marriage-by-proxy in April 1770 in Vienna in which she became the Dauphine of France. Her words to her maids are, in Latin and incorrect French:

  Auspice Deo / Soyez persuadée chere Durieu que je penserai toujours a vous et que ne n’oubliere jamais les peines que vous avez eu avec moi c’est dont vous assure / votre tres fidele / Antoine Archiduchesse

  Auspice Deo literally translates “Under the auspices of God” which means not only having faith in God but to trustingly place one’s destiny in the hands of God. A rough translation of the rest of the message reads: “Be persuaded, dear Durieu, that I will think always of you and the pains you have taken with me, may this assure you. Your very faithful, Archduchess Antoine.” One can only imagine the trouble the handmaid went through with her turbulent adolescent charge while preparing Antoine to leave her home forever and become a future Queen of France. 2

  After the sumptuous festivities, the Archduchess-Dauphine went on a monastic retreat for prayer and meditation, in which sh
e also confessed and received Holy Communion. The retreat ended with a visit to her father’s tomb in the crypt of the Capuchin monastery in Vienna. Yes, it was the same crypt where her sister Josepha allegedly contracted smallpox. On April 21, 1770, the youngest Archduchess left her family home forever. The moment came when she was to bid farewell to her mother. They had become particularly close in the last few months because the Empress had decided to keep Antoine constantly at her side, day and night, in order not to lose the opportunity to instruct the little bride in the duties of her new state in life. There was profuse weeping, not only on the part of the mother and her child, but the members of the imperial household, both servants and courtiers mourned the loss of their Archduchess, as did the citizens of Vienna.3 She knelt for her mother’s blessing. In the future she would see her sister Mimi and her brothers Joseph and Max; she would never see her mother or her other siblings again. Although this is what usually happened to princesses, Antoine had been ill-prepared, and found being torn from her family and homeland particularly traumatic. In some ways, she stopped maturing inside and remained psychologically at the age of fourteen, at least until she was forced to mature during the Revolution.

  The Empress Maria Theresa wrote the following letter to the Dauphin Louis-Auguste after bidding a tearful farewell to her wayward Antoine on April 21, 1770.

  Your bride, my dear Dauphin, has just left me. I do hope that she will cause your happiness. I have brought her up with the design that she should do so, because I have for some time foreseen that she would share your destiny. I have inspired her with an eager desire to do her duty to you, with a tender attachment to your person, with a resolution to be attentive to think and do everything which may please you. I have also been most careful to enjoin in her a tender devotion towards the Master of all Sovereigns, being thoroughly persuaded that we are but badly providing for the welfare of the nations which are entrusted to us, when we fail in our duty to Him who breaks sceptres and overthrows thrones according to his pleasure.