Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars

by Elena Maria Vidal

  I say then to you, my dear Dauphin, as I say to my daughter: ‘Cultivate your duties towards God. Seek to cause the happiness of the people over whom you will reign (it will be too soon, come when it may). Love the king, your grandfather; be humane like him; be always accessible to the unfortunate. If you behave in this manner, it is impossible that happiness can fail to be your lot.’ My daughter will love you, I am certain, because I know her. But the more that I answer to you for her affection, and for her anxiety to please you, the more earnestly do I entreat you to vow to her the most sincere attachment.

  Farewell, my dear Dauphin. May you be happy. I am bathed in tears. 4

  The following is an excerpt of the letter the Empress composed for her daughter on the same day. The letter has often been criticized as an example of Maria Theresa’s controlling personality, but it is important to remember that she was not only a mother sending an immature fourteen-year-old into a den of iniquity but also a Sovereign who must answer for the peace of her empire if the treaty fell through due to Antoine’s lack of upbringing. The advice she gives contains everything for a solid spiritual life in the world as well as what it means to be a Catholic princess.

  RULES TO BE READ EVERY MONTH

  When you waken, on rising, immediately go down on your knees and say your morning prayers. Then do a little religious reading, even if only for ten minutes or so without being distracted by anything or having spoken to anyone. Everything depends on a good beginning to the day and on the intention with which you begin. This can transform even indifferent actions into good and worthy ones. This is a point you must be quite firm about; its execution depends only on you, and it can influence your spiritual and temporal happiness. It is the same with evening prayers and examining your conscience; but I repeat, your morning prayers and a little religious reading are the most important matters to remember.

  Always tell me what books you are reading. Pray as often as you can during the day, especially at Holy Mass. I hope that you will listen to it and learn from it every day, and go twice on Sundays and feast days, if that is the custom at your court. However much I would like you to occupy yourself in praying and with good reading, I would not however wish you to think of introducing something which is not customary in France: you must not claim that something is exceptional, nor cite what is customary here, nor ask for it to be imitated; on the contrary you must conform totally to what is the custom at your court.

  Go after dinner if possible and especially on Sunday, to Vespers. Pray in the evening and when you pass in front of a church or a cross, but behave normally while doing so, as this does not prevent your heart concentrating on inner prayers, the presence of God being all that is necessary for this whatever the occasion; your incomparable father had that quality to perfection.

  On entering a church, allow yourself to feel only great respect and do not let your curiosity run away with you, as this will lead to distractions. All eyes will be fixed on you; therefore do not give rise to talk. In France people behave in a very respectable way while in church and also while in public; you do not find, as you do here, oratories which are too comfortable, and which often give rise to carelessness in people’s bearing and talk, which scandalizes many in France. Remain on your knees for as long as possible, that is the best way to give an example. Do not allow yourself to assume overly serious expressions as they can seem hypocritical; in that country especially, you must avoid that reproach.

  Do not read any book, however indifferent it may be, without your confessor’s approval: this is even more necessary in France than elsewhere; because there are always books being published there which seem pleasant and erudite, but behind this respectable façade they are pernicious with regard to religion and morals. I therefore beg you my daughter not to read any book, not even a pamphlet, without your confessor’s permission; I expect you, my dear daughter to behave thus as a very real proof of love for your good mother, and respect for my advice, as I wish only for your salvation and happiness. Never forget the anniversary of your late dear father’s death and mine when the time comes: until then you can pray for me on my birthday.5

  The letter also urges the recitation of the Angelus, Holy Communion on feasts of the Mother of God, and forbearance in speaking of the Jesuits, who had recently been abolished from France.6

  The trip to France continued as it began, with tears and farewells. Antoine stopped to see La Marianne at the Abbey of Klagenfurt in the Carinthian Alps and bade good-bye to her brother Joseph at Melk with its fabulous library. After journeying through the German lands, the former Antoine, now styled “Marie-Antoinette, Dauphine of France” arrived at the French border for the ordeal of the remise or handing over of the hostage/princess to her new countrymen. Contrary to popular belief, the Dauphine was not stripped naked in public but was privately dressed in French attire by her new ladies.7 The ordeal was in bidding farewell to her Austrian retinue, some of whom had been close friends since childhood. She wept, knowing that there was no going back and that she would never see her mother again. Perhaps the most hair-raising part of the remise were the gruesome tapestries depicting the Greek myth of the calamitous and bloody marriage of Jason and Medea, a bizarre choice of decoration for welcoming a bridal party. One of the tapestries portrayed Jason’s second wife being burned alive by her clothes. The teenager gasped and wondered aloud if it was an omen.8 Baroness Oberkirch, a young lady from an Alsatian noble family, who would encounter Antoinette on and off over the years, was present at the handing over at the border and later at the formal entry into Strasbourg. The great Goethe was also present; both baroness and writer were appalled by the tapestries. However, the surroundings did not diminish the beauty of the Dauphine, who emerged from the pavilion arrayed in cloth of gold like the goddess of the dawn; the Baroness said that Antoinette looked “a thousand times more charming” in her new French clothes, describing her as having a lily and rose complexion and the Habsburg lip which gave her mouth an air of slight disdain, as well as being slender, graceful and stately in spite of her extreme youth.9

  Following the consternation of having Medea inflicted upon her, Antoinette was rapturously received in Strasbourg by her new subjects, with a blaze of illuminations so that the entire city seemed to be aglow. Little boys dressed as Swiss guards escorted her into the city and little girls in traditional Alsatian costumes strewed flower petals before her. She spent the night in the episcopal palace as the guest of the Bishop-Cardinal Prince de Rohan. In the morning at the Cathedral she met the Bishop-Cardinal’s nephew, the Prince-Bishop Louis de Rohan, who would himself become a Cardinal and would be persuaded to arrange the purchase of a certain necklace. It was Antoinette’s first experience with the imperious Rohans, who were the premier family of France after the Bourbons. No doubt on that bright day in May the Cardinal and his nephew the Bishop were charm and chivalry incarnate. The scene at the Cathedral is poignantly described in Frances Mossiker’s book The Queen’s Necklace:

  Prince-Bishop Louis led her to the high altar. She knelt on the red velvet prie-dieu at the altar’s base. Prince Louis lifted the monstrance for the benediction. While silvery notes of harp strings tinkled down from the lofty choir, these two were joined in sacred and intimate communion. His fine hand, with its jeweled bishop’s ring, upraised to bestow God’s blessing, her head bowed to receive it, they shared the sacrament of benediction―these two who were to destroy each other. 10

  However, at the moment the future appeared to be radiant. Strasbourg was a triumph for the fourteen year old Dauphine. The same enthusiastic welcome was repeated in every town the princess entered along the way to Paris, and the joy appeared to be genuine. In the meantime, an apprehensive Dauphin Louis-Auguste at Versailles was following his bride’s progress via his maps, hoping that the ordeal of the wedding festivities would soon come and go. 11

  A day before meeting her husband, the princess bride stopped at Châlons where she was treated to a play. Although she followed along with the scri
pt in front of her, the child was obviously uneasy. To quote a letter to the Empress from Count Starhemburg, who was accompanying the new Dauphine: “All the while she made faces, bit her lips, held her fingers and her handkerchief in her nose, scratched her head constantly, leaned back on her chair, in sum, did not conduct herself as fittingly as I would have desired.” 12 She grew more nervous as they approached their destination. The last stop was Soissons, and it was a Sunday so they rested.

  There were many disgruntled people in France at that time; Louis XV, once called the Well-Beloved, was no longer popular due to being ruled by his courtesans, the latest of whom, according to gossip, had been a bona fide prostitute. All the kingdom’s woes were blamed on the late Madame de Pompadour and the current Madame du Barry. Because of Madame de Pompadour, France had been dragged into the Seven Years War, which ended in a humiliating defeat by England and the loss of territories, including Canada. The French economy had never recovered from the loss. As it stood at the time, Madame du Barry had added to the tarnishing of the royal dignity, since she was the illegitimate daughter of a friar and a seamstress who, after a polished convent education, had worked briefly in a brothel. Never had a genuine prostitute been the king’s maitresse en titre, and the entire court felt degraded, most especially the children and grandchildren of His Majesty. It brought to mind the prophecy that had heralded the coming of Jeanne d’Arc, the prophecy that said even as France had been lost by a woman, it would be saved by a virgin from Lorraine.13 Thus a popular ditty spread through the land:

  France,

  It seems to be your destiny

  To be subjugated to Woman

  Your salvation came from the Maiden

  Your death will come from the Whore. 14

  Thus the youngest daughter of Francis of Lorraine entered France bathed in the legend and mystique of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Lorraine, and like Jeanne great things were expected of her. From the beginning she was set up to be the virgin opposing the whore, but woe to her should she ever be perceived as a whore herself. Later, Antoinette would even don male attire, heightening the connection between herself and the Maid, La Pucelle, sent to save France. 15 In 1770, France did not need to be saved from the English but from economic ruin and moral decline. Like Jeanne d’Arc, Antoinette had the challenge of winning over the Dauphin, who in Antoinette’s case was her fifteen year old bridegroom. Unlike the Maid of Lorraine, the Dauphine did not have heavenly voices to guide her, only her mother, writing from afar, her mother’s ambassador Comte de Mery-Argenteau, and the tutor Abbé Vermond.

  Furthermore, she had the additional problem of having a husband who had been strongly against marrying her. Louis-Auguste’s late parents and his aunts, that is, the people whom he most respected, had been against the Austrian alliance, seeing it as the work of Madame de Pompadour and the godless Choiseul, who referred to young Louis and his brothers and sisters as the “Dresden knick-knacks.”16 By 1770 La Pompadour was dead, and in her place was Madame du Barry, who belonged to the anti-Austrian clique. Young Dauphin Louis-Auguste’s aunt and godmother, the feisty old maid Madame Adélaïde, daughter of Louis XV, never let her godson forget that his bride was not only an enemy of France, but that she had been brought over by a middle class courtesan, La Pompadour, who also had reddish hair and was named “Antoinette.”

  The title “Dauphin” literally meant “dolphin” and its origins have become lost, although it had nothing to do with dolphins and is thought by some to date back to a Celtic phrase for “chief of a territory.” 17 It was used to designate the rulers of various territories, none of which were near the ocean and most of which were mountainous. In 1343, the Dauphin of Viennois ceded his lands to the French crown, lands which eventually became known as the Dauphiné. Charles VI (1368-1422) was the first to grant the province Viennois and title of Dauphin to his eldest son and heir to the throne, although before it had belonged to various members of the French royal family. One of the first royal French heirs known as the Dauphin was the future Charles VII (1403-1461) who was aided by Joan of Arc. The official title was Premier fils de France et Dauphin du Viennois (First son of France and Dauphin of Viennois). When the heir was not the king’s son or grandson he was not known as Dauphin, but as “Monsieur.”

  It had long been the custom at the French court to ride out to meet the bride. On May 14, 1770, Louis and Antoinette saw each other for the first time in the forest of Compiègne, just a few miles from the spot where Jeanne d’Arc had been captured by the Burgundians at the gates of the town of Compiègne. In the town was a Carmelite monastery, patronized by the late Queen Marie Leszczyńska and the princesses. The Polish Queen, her daughters, and her daughter-in-law Marie- Josèphe de Saxe, would visit the nuns in the cloister, bringing their sewing. Once when the Queen’s feet were cold she asked the nuns to join her in a dance, and they did so. 18 In the future the new Dauphine would provide a dowry for a poor girl called Mademoiselle Lidoine who, as Mother Thérèse de Saint-Augustin, would lead the nuns to martyrdom during the Terror of 1794. But as Louis-Auguste and Antoinette bashfully peered at each other during those intial awkward moments, it was spring and the sun was shining. Louis-Auguste had been warned by his tutor the Duc de La Vauguyon to beware of the wiles of the female sex, so he remained aloof. He did not want to be ruled by a woman the way his grandfather was. Plus, his bride was little more than a child. Thus Antoinette had the easy task of winning over Louis XV, who immediately found her enchanting, as well as the monumental challenge of seducing his grandson, her own betrothed husband, who was determined not to become entrapped by her. All the while, she had hostile forces awaiting her first mistake.

  At this point a few words are needed to describe the château which became Antoinette’s home from May 1770 until October 1789. It is generally referred to by the French as a château, not as a “palace” or palais, because a château is by definition a country dwelling. After several harrowing childhood experiences in the Louvre-Tuileries’ antique galleries and dark passageways, young Louis XIV wanted light, color, fresh air, gardens, fountains, lakes, forests, pageantry, hunting, and dancing. He chose his father Louis XIII’s cherished hunting lodge at a tiny hamlet called Versailles and built around it like an oyster shell around a pearl. The rose-gold edifice which emerged over the years had the enchantment of an abode upon which a traveler in a Perrault fairy-tale might stumble by accident. Each gallery and each chamber was more exquisite than the next, peopled by courtiers and damsels in glittering array, all adhering to a complex code of etiquette like the steps of a ballet. Louis XIV liked order as well as beauty and he possessed the charisma and strength of personality to see that his wishes were carried out. Along with his personal qualities he also had money, hoarded for him in his youth by the ambitious Fouquet and later by the brilliant Colbert. After the court began to be established there in the late 1670’s, Colbert made certain that Versailles was a showcase of French craftsmanship, with the finest of furniture, architecture, porcelain, silks, and fashions being on display to the diplomats and travelers who visited from all over Europe.

  Versailles was open to French subjects as well, as long as they were decently attired, although beggars always managed to get inside, too. Merchants and craftsmen had their stalls for selling their goods, and visitors could do their shopping as if at the most glamorous mall in the world. They could also watch the royal family dine and wander into the state rooms and go just about anywhere except the Queen’s room when she was bathing or dressing. They could watch the Queen and princesses in childbirth, though. The King and Queen and members of the royal family went about the crowds of Versailles with little practical protection, although all the gentlemen were armed with swords; only once in a century and a half did a madman try to assassinate the monarch, Louis XIV’s great grandson Louis XV. It seems the Kings and Queens of France never felt they had to be protected from their own people. How everything was to change….

  Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, th
e Sun King was running out of money, not because of Versailles, or even because of his many mistresses and their children, but because of the series of ruinous wars which sapped the country of its man power and resources. Furthermore he had revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted protection to the Huguenots, those French Protestants who made up the bulk of the middle class, forcing most of them to emigrate. The economy was thus weakened on several fronts. Louis XIV was therefore one of the worst of kings as well as one of the greatest. He was great because he made France the strongest, most influential country in Europe. His failure was that in achieving the heights of glory he was simultaneously sowing the seeds of disaster, an economic and political disaster of epic proportions which would, generations later, be left to two teenagers to try to manage. For by the time Antoinette arrived at Versailles, the plumbing was antiquated, and extensive renovations were required in order to make the château more habitable. The outlying village of Trianon had been cleared away and was part of the park of Versailles, with two small villas with exquisite gardens, called Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon. Many of the trees of the park had become overgrown, and would receive extensive pruning and chopping down under Louis XVI. And under Antoinette, there would once more be a village at Trianon.