She was an object too sublime and beautiful for my dull pen to describe...Her dress was everything that art and wealth could make it....She had a fine complexion indicating her perfect health, and was a handsome woman in her face and figure....not a feature of her face, nor a motion of any part of her person, especially her arm and her hand, could be criticized as being out of order.39
All in all, John Adams loved the France of Louis XVI and Antoinette, in spite of his homesickness. To quote from McCullough’s biography:
As ardently as he longed for home, he hated to leave Paris, hated to leave France, and expected he would never return. ‘The climate is more favorable to my constitution than ours,’ he acknowledged to Abigail. He loved the food, the civility of everyday life. The French were ‘the happiest people in the world...and have the best disposition to make others so. There is such a choice of elegant entertainments in the theatric way, of good company and excellent books that nothing would be wanting for me in this country but my family and peace to my country to make me one of the happiest of men.’40
Unfortunately, the bankruptcy France incurred by the war caused the political crisis in France to escalate, leading to the bloody Revolution of 1789 and to the deaths of Louis and Antoinette. But Louis XVI did indeed show foresight in his decision to help the colonies. Twice the new nation would come to the aid of France when France was in dire need. I always have thought that in addition to saying “Lafayette, we are here,” General Pershing should have said “Louis XVI, we are here” since without the King’s help America may never have become a nation.
The reign of Louis XVI in the years before the French Revolution has been reassessed by historians in the 20th and 21st centuries. Louis had many great accomplishments as a political leader and was widely admired by the other sovereigns of Europe while still in his twenties. Louis’ victory over England threatened to upset the hegemony of the British Empire, especially since the French were beginning to make headway in the Far East. Louis tried to reverse previous losses and see
the growing British dominance in India come to an end. He allied with the Maratha Empire and took the side of the Sultan of Mysore in the Second Anglo-Mysore War in the hope of breaking the dominance of the British East India Company, curtailing British influence in India and increasing French influence. He welcomed the envoys of Tipoo Sahib, the Sultan of Mysore, to Versailles. Antoinette was so fascinated by their exotic attire she summoned Madame Tussaud to recreate them in wax.41It was under King Louis XVI that France first took a serious interest in Vietnam and, indirectly, helped bring about the victory of the last great imperial dynasty of Vietnamese history. Perhaps this is one of the reasons so many pamphlets, both political and pornographic, were sent into France by the British government in an attempt to foment discord and destroy the French monarchy.
In 1785 Louis XVI commissioned the naval hero La Pérouse to outfit two ships for an expedition to explore the unknown regions of the Pacific Ocean. Louis and Antoinette were fascinated with Oceania, having each heard of the discoveries of Captain James Cook. Captain Cook was the first European to circumnavigate New Zealand. His explorations were acclaimed all over Europe; it is said that when news of his death came to Versailles in 1779, the Queen burst into tears. Later, in her cell in the Conciergerie, one of the few books provided for Antoinette was The Voyages of Captain Cook, which was said to have been her favorite. Louis did not want the British to outstrip the French in nautical explorations; along with La Pérouse he engaged an astronomer, a physician, three biologists, a mathematician and three draftsmen. The Catholic chaplains who were to accompany the yoyage were trained as scientists as well. The King, who was a skilled amateur cartographer and geographer, painstakingly mapped out the voyage which lasted for three years. The adventurers pinpointed the exact location of previously unknown Pacific Islands. In 1788, however, La Pérouse and his men encountered cannibals and the crews of both frigates perished miserably. One man escaped with maps and charts so that the voyage was not in vain. The tragedy destroyed the theory of the philosophes that man in his primitive state was benign and peaceful. It is interesting that even amid their misfortunes, the thoughts of the King and the Queen went to the mysterious lands on the other side of the world. Antoinette, other than journeying from Austria to France in 1770, never traveled—it would have cost too much money—and she never saw the ocean. Louis saw the Atlantic Ocean once at Cherbourg in 1785, but never crossed it; as a geographer he probably longed to explore the ends of the earth had it been compatible with his duties as King. His vicarious explorations of Oceania by means of La Pérouse meant a great deal to him. As mentioned above, it is telling that on the morning of his death he asked: “Is there any news of Monsieur de La Pérouse?”42
8 Follies and Escapades
“We adored her without thinking of loving her.” ―the Prince de Ligne
There was so much sadness in her life that we forget that Antoinette possessed a genuinely happy disposition as well as the gift of seeing the droll side of every situation. She loved living and had the ability to laugh at herself. As a young Queen she enjoyed driving around the grounds of Versailles by herself in a cabriolet, something no queen had ever done before. Once the eighteen-year-old Antoinette dressed as a Grey Nun in order to see her busy young husband in his study, quite diligent and intent upon being a good king. Louis did not recognize the “good sister” at first and when he saw her convulsed with laughter, he thought she was ill. It was several minutes before he realized the nun was really his wife. Another time, at a state banquet, she made pellets out of bread and threw them at Louis across the table. People were shocked, but much more so when she cheered very loud at the horse races on the Bois de Boulogne. Louis had to keep telling her to be quiet. On the way to a soirée in Paris, Antoinette’s coach broke down so she hired a taxi to get to the party on time. “I came in a fiacre!” she gleefully told everyone, but the Parisians did not view the event with humor. It is the mistake of a sheltered young girl, who did not realize the dangers.
It is unfortunate that such instances of youthful high spirits were twisted into something vicious by people who did not understand humor that was not obscene, or a sense of adventure that was not connected with dangerous intrigues. Few were indifferent to Antoinette, however. She was either loved with a reverence akin to piety, or hated with a fury. One of her first escapades occurred early in her husband’s reign. Antoinette had been reading a history book about the Incas and conceived the idea of going outside at dawn to see the sun rise. Louis gave his consent to the adventure, as long as he did not have to come along, and as long as Antoinette was properly escorted. Accompanied by Madame de Noailles and several of her ladies, as well as bodyguards, Antoinette fulfilled her dream of experiencing the sights and sounds of early morning, and the colors of a glorious sunrise. “How beautiful it is!” she exclaimed, and she said she understood why the Incas worshipped the sun. Unfortunately, like almost everything else in her life, it was turned into something evil by the gossips. Soon after the first pornographic pamphlet about her appeared in Paris and at Versailles, called Le Lever d’Aurore, which transformed the innocent adventure into an orgy. Louis was furious; he had police find the culprit, who was a priest, and had him thrown in jail. It was only the beginning of the pamphlet industry which would flourish at Antoinette’s expense.1 Her brother-in-law Artois was usually portrayed as her lover, although other pamphlets showed her participating in mass orgies with both sexes.
The escapades of sleigh-riding, going incognito to the opera ball, hunting and watching the horse races in the Bois de Boulogne, were harmless past-times for a twenty-year-old queen. Gambling, however, became a serious addiction. It must be kept in mind, however, that Antoinette was not the only one. Gambling was an entrenched part of court life from the days of Louis XIV. As scholar Ross Hamilton describes it:
Gambling obsessed all levels of French society during the Enlightenment. Louis XIV held appartements du roi given over to gambli
ng three times a week at Versailles, the queen hosted a nightly game, and courtiers scheduled additional occasions for play. Hosts so frequently acted as bankers for games to entertain their guests that satirists, chroniclers, and moralists complained that compulsive gambling had destroyed other forms of social entertainment. In Paris ten authorized maisons de jeux operated games involving some degree of skill (jeux de commerce) but essentially they served as fronts for more lucrative chance-driven games (jeux de hasard). Gambling also took place at the two great Paris fairs during almost four months of the year, all year long at foreign embassies, and eventually at gambling houses at the Hotel de Gesvres and later at the Hotel de Soissons. In addition to these legal venues, the large number of clandestine Parisian gaming rooms, lighted by tripots, made one visitor comment that ‘flaming pots set Paris ablaze,’ and gambling was by no means restricted to Paris. The ‘Age des Lumieres’ was lighted by gambling. Although official prohibitions referred to both religious and sociological dangers from gambling, within the context of the period, risking large sums at play became an analogy for risking one’s life in battle. Having the courage to risk and winning or losing with equal equanimity demonstrated indifference to material gain and thus served as a means of displaying hereditary status.2
In the Old Regime, gambling was one of the only “honorable” ways in which the often cash-strapped aristocrats, who were forbidden to engage in trade, could make money. It also replaced the thrill of war. It required a certain amount of discipline to gamble well; one had to have mastery over facial expressions so as not to reveal one’s thoughts about winning or losing, or one’s strategy. A noble had to be able to lose with grace and promptly pay debts. Antoinette had been taught as a child by her own mother to gamble, because the Empress knew that a princess who could not play well would soon be separated from her money. Futhermore, the stakes at the court of Austria were much higher than at the court of France, which made Antoinette an intrepid player. As a teenager, she became inordinately attached to the practice. As she began to have gambling debts, Louis XVI, who was trying to save the government finances and give an example of thrift, forbade her to play any more games of chance, except for lotto and cavagnole which were played for low stakes. The Queen, however, preferred games with high stakes, such as lansquenet and faro. While at Fontainebleau, she begged her husband to let her have one last game in honor of her twenty-first birthday. He gave permission and, sending for the “gambling bankers” from Paris, Antoinette made sure the game went on for three days. Louis told her that she and her friends were “a worthless lot.”
Gambling in France did not disappear with the fall of the monarchy. The revolutionaries who replaced Louis and Antoinette had their own share of gambling debts. According to historian Russell T. Barnhart:
The mania for gambling had been transferred from defunct, monarchical Versailles to the thriving, bourgeois Palais Royal, where the five main gaming clubs throbbed from noon till midnight. During the Revolution, Prince Talleyrand won 30,000 francs at one club, and after Waterloo in 1815, Marshal Blucher lost 1,500,000 francs in one night at another. To bring the situation under control and raise taxes for the state, in 1806 Napoleon legalized the main clubs, which from 1819 to 1837 grossed an enormous 137 million francs.3
In addition to losing money gambling, Antoinette also spent more money on jewels than she should have. Early in her husband’s reign, the jeweler Boehmer approached her with some spectacular diamond earrings. She already had more than enough jewels; along with the crown jewels she had a private collection that had been part of her dowry, in addition to the jewels Louis often gave her as gifts. However she wanted the girandole earrings badly, and was able to bring the enormous price down by having some of her own diamonds used in the jeweler’s design. Having saved a little money, she then fell prey to a pair of diamond bracelets which she bought on an impulse, after likewise bringing the price down. But the Queen had overspent her allowance and had to go to the King for more money. Louis did not scold her but quietly remarked that it was no wonder she had no money, since she was so fond of diamonds. The story of her extravagance spread far and wide across France and even to Vienna, via Mercy, although Maria Theresa acted like she had merely read about it in the newspapers. She scolded her daughter but since Antoinette had already been scolded many times for other lesser matters, she did not take her mother’s words to heart.4 Unfortunately, those purchases from Boehmer would lead everyone to later believe that she was guilty of swindling Cardinal de Rohan in the Diamond Necklace scandal.
Antoinette also enjoyed betting on horses. Louis’ cousin, the Duc de Chartres, who loved English customs, had introduced horse-racing to France in the mid-70’s. He and Louis’ youngest brother the Comte d’Artois, as well as the Duc de Lauzun, a dashing courtier with a bad reputation, began to have horse races regularly, usually at the Bois de Boulogne. Antoinette found the sport to be the height of excitement, and forgot all decorum required for a Queen by cheering for her favorite mounts. Caught up in the moment, her usual candor became more pronounced when speaking to gentlemen; when people saw her speaking freely to a man like Lauzun, eyebrows were raised. The horse-racing and gambling took up only a short period of Antoinette’s life, and yet it is something for which she is remembered, even before her numerous charities. In order for the excesses of the Revolution to be justified, the failings of a teenage queen are held up for posterity.
Another pastime of Antoinette’s which caused no end of gossip was the delight she took in sleigh rides, no doubt as a reminder of her childhood in Austria.Why this innocent winter recreation was considered the height of decadence tells us how the French were used to viewing their queens: as living secluded at Versailles. The sleigh rides occurred during the harsh winter of 1775-76, when Antoinette’s sister-in-law the Comtesse d’Artois was waiting to give birth. No doubt, Antoinette was depressed and had to be away from Versailles and in the fresh air. The parties were described as a delight for the eye by Madame Campan, with the jingle bells and plumed horses.5 It was while sleigh riding that Antoinette befriended the Princesse de Lamballe, whom she made the Superintendent of her household, much to the universal disapproval of the court.
It was during those first three years of her husband’s reign, before becoming a mother, that Antoinette’s reputation was destroyed by those who gave an evil interpretation to her light-hearted distractions. As her biographer Rocheterie affirms:
An extraordinary thing was that this passion for pleasure did not sensibly alter the basis of piety which the queen owed to the principles of her mother and to the instruction of her father; and despite all the errors which the ambassador did not cease to point out to the empress, often with exaggeration, Marie Antoinette continued to give to the court an example of regularity in her religious practices; and she often called a halt in the whirl of frivolity which we have just described, but of which we must not exaggerate the character.
Some historians have tried to make use of certain imprudences to asperse the young woman, and, above all, of the so-called revelations due to the fatuity of certain men admitted to her intimacy; people have talked of the loves of Marie Antoinette. True history has done justice to these calumnies. During this period of dissipation, from the point of view of morals she committed no error. ‘In all that concerns morality, there has never been in the conduct of the queen the slightest act which has not borne the imprint of a soul virtuous, upright, inflexible in all the principles which make for honesty of character.... No one is more entirely convinced of this fact than the king.’ Such is the testimony which Mercy gives in the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, and which all his later correspondence confirmed; and such is the opinion expressed later by a brother, Joseph II, who was severe and ill-disposed toward the queen….After having studied these reports, there is no impartial historian who will not agree with the words of Mercy and Joseph II., and who…will not subscribe to these lines of one of the men who knew Marie Antoinette best: ‘Her so-called ga
llantry was never more than a sentiment of profound friendship, perhaps somewhat marked, for one or two persons, and a general coquetry natural to a woman and to a queen desirous of pleasing every one. At the very time when her youth and lack of experience might have led us to take certain liberties with her, there was never one of us who had the happiness of seeing her every day who dared to be guilty of the smallest indecorum: she acted the queen without being conscious of it, we adored her without thinking of loving her.’6
“Marie-Antoinette à la paysanne- in peasant costume”
“Artois and Antoinette followed by the Comte and Comtesse de Provence, at one of the last court balls, held in 1785. The costumes were designed by Boquet of the Opera.”
9 Marie-Antoinette and the Arts
“But the most remarkable thing about her face was her brilliant complexion. I have never seen any so dazzling.” ―Madame Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun on Marie-Antoinette
Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars Page 15