Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars

by Elena Maria Vidal

  She is sensible of the friendship of certain persons who are the most devoted to her; then she is declared to be ‘amorous’ of them. Sometimes she requires too much for their families; then she is ‘unreasonable.’

  She gives little fêtes, and works herself at her Trianon: that is called ‘bourgeoise.’ She buys Saint-Cloud for the health of her children and to take them from the malaria of Versailles: they pronounce her ‘extravagant.’ Her promenades in the evening on the terrace, or on horseback in the Bois de Boulogne, or sometimes on foot round the music in the Orangery ‘seem suspicious.’ Her most innocent pleasures are thought criminal; her general loving-kindness is ‘coquettish.’ She fears to win at cards, at which she is compelled to play, and they say she ‘wastes the money of the State.’

  She laughed and sang and danced until she was twenty five years old: they declared her ‘frivolous.’ The affairs of the kingdom became embroiled, the spirit of party arose and divided society; she would take no side, and they called her ‘ungrateful.’

  She no longer amused herself; she foresaw misfortunes: they declared her ‘intriguing.’ She dropped certain little requests or recommendations she had made to the king or the ministers as soon as she feared they were troublesome, and then she was ‘fickle.’

  With so many crimes to her charge, and all so well-proved, did she not deserve her misfortunes? But I see I have forgotten the greatest. The queen, who was almost a prisoner of State in her château of Versailles, took the liberty sometimes to go on foot, followed by a servant, through one of the galleries, to the apartments of Mme. de Lamballe or Mme. de Polignac. How shocking a scandal! The late queen was always carried in a sedan-chair to see her cousin, Mme. de Talmont, where she found a rather bad company of Polish relations, who claimed to be Leczinskis.

  The queen, beautiful as the day, and almost always in her own hair, — except on occasions of ceremony, when her toilet, about which she never cared, was regulated for her, — was naturally talked about; for everybody wanted to please her. The late Leczinska, old before her time and rather ugly, in a large cap called, I think, ‘butterfly,’ would sometimes command certain questionable plays at the theatre; but no one found fault with her for that devout ladies like scandals. When, in our time, they gave us a play of that sort we used to call it the queen’s repertory, and Marie Antoinette would scold us, laughing, and say we might at least make known it was the queen before her. No one ever dared to risk too free a speech in her presence, nor too gay a tale, nor a coarse insinuation. She had taste and judgment; and as for the three Graces, she united them all in herself alone.6

  The Queen was cautious about gossip due to the infatuations which many gentlemen cherished for her. As the Prince penned many years after her death:

  Who could see her, day after day, without adoring her? I did not feel it fully until she said to me: ‘My mother thinks it wrong that you should be so long at Versailles. Go and spend a little time with your command, and write letters to Vienna to let them know you are there, and then come back here.’ That kindness, that delicacy, but more than all the thought that I must spend two weeks away from her, brought the tears to my eyes, which her pretty heedlessness of those early days, keeping her a hundred leagues away from gallantry, prevented her from seeing. As I never have believed in passions that are not reciprocal, two weeks cured me of what I here avow to myself for the first time, and would never avow to others in my lifetime for fear of being laughed at.

  But consider how this sentiment, which gave place to the warmest friendship, would have detected a passion in that charming queen, had she felt one for any man; and with what horror I saw her given in Paris, and thence, thanks to their vile libels, all over Europe, to the Duc de Coigny, to M. le Comte d'Artois, M. de Lamberti, M. de Fersen, Mr. Conway, Lord Stratheven, and other Englishmen as silly as himself, and two or three stupid Germans. Did I ever see aught in her society that did not bear the stamp of grace, kindness, and good taste? She scented an intriguer at a league's distance; she detested pretensions of all kinds. It was for this reason that the whole family of Polignac and their friends, such as Valentin Esterhazy, Baron Bezenval, and Vaudreuil, also Segur and I, were so agreeable to her. She often laughed with me at the struggle for favour among the courtiers, and even wept over some who were disappointed.7

  The Prince de Ligne’s refusal to help the Belgians rebel against the Empire led to the loss of his estates in

  his native land. He died in Austria in 1814.

  Count Bálint (Valentin) Miklos Esterhazy (1740-1805) was a scion of one of the most powerful and well-known noble families in Hungary, but he himself never spoke Hungarian and never lived there. His family had immigrated to France after the lost Hungarian revolt earlier in the century; Maria Theresa never forgot that his grandfather had been a rebel. After his father’s death in 1743, little Valentin was brought up in France by a Count of Bercsényi (Bercheny), a Hungarian immigrant. He grew up to become an officer in the French army and found favor at the royal court. It was Valentin who conveyed the portrait of the Dauphin Louis-Auguste to the Archduchess Antoine in Vienna. A choiseuliste, he served as colonel of a French regiment until the dismissal of Choiseul in 1774, when he resigned. He was a very brave and loyal friend of the King and the Queen, and had a beloved wife to whom he remained loyal and wrote hundreds of letters to her. He was one of the four older gentlemen chosen to wait upon the Queen when she was recovering from measles at Petit Trianon. As the Dauphine Marie-Antoinette wrote to her Mother in December of 1772:

  Esterhazy was at our ball yesterday. Every one was greatly pleased with his dignified manner and with his style of dancing. I ought to have spoken to him when he was presented to me, and my silence only proceeded from embarrassment, as I did not know him. It would be doing me great injustice to think that I have any feeling of indifference to my country; I have more reason than any one to feel, every day of my life, the value of the blood which flows in my veins, and it is only from prudence that at times I abstain from showing how proud I am of it….8

  Esterhazy, who was in the favor of the Comte d’Artois, was made a maréchal de camp in 1780 and placed in charge of inspecting the troops. He continued to be devoted to his Fanny and their several children. During the Revolution he helped the French emigrés to escape by way of Namur, then hastened back to Paris to assist the King. He later joined Artois and the emigrés in Coblenz; they sent him to Russia to seek the help of Catherine II against the forces of the Revolution. He failed in his mission but gained an estate in Russia, where he died in 1805.

  Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brünstatt (1722–1791), the last commander of the Swiss Guards in France, belonged to the Polignac circle and was thus one of Antoinette’s friends. He was one of the four older gentlemen who waited upon the Queen when she was recovering from measles in 1779. He was a wealthy bachelor, spending a great deal of money on objets d’arts. According to Madame Campan:

  The Baron de Besenval added to the bluntness of the Swiss all the adroitness of a French courtier. His fifty years and gray hairs made him enjoy among women the confidence inspired by mature age, although he had not given up the thought of love affairs. He talked of his native mountains with enthusiasm. He would at any time sing the ‘Ranz des Vaches’ with tears in his eyes, and was the best story-teller in the Comtesse Jules’s circle.9

  The Baron de Besenval was unique among Antoinette’s friends for his skill in yodeling, although his family originally came from Savoy not Switzerland, and his mother was Polish, a kinswoman of Queen Marie

  Leszczyńska. Beneath his bonhomie and charm was insolence and disdain. Antoinette, being innocent of the ways of the world, surely thought that his age and white hair made him beyond the slightest romantic pretensions, but she was mistaken. It was the yodeling Swiss who described the Queen as having “a wonderful elegance in

  everything.”10 Unfortunately, his infatuation with her caused her much harm, due to his careless vanity and

  romantic fanta
sies. Madame Campan describes a time when Antoinette, trying to stop the duel between the Comte d’Artois and the Duc de Bourbon, had Monsieur Campan escort the Baron into a small room attached to her private chambers so she could relay him a message from the King to pass on to Artois. The Baron later exaggerated his descriptions of the encounter, making it sound as if the Queen had invited him into some private love nest. The Queen, furious at his overtures towards her, ordered him out of her presence. She did not tell the King, fearing a scandal. Besenval secured his own petty revenge by making cowardly insinuations in his memoirs. As Madame Campan later wrote:

  I read with infinite pain the manner in which that simple fact is perverted in M. de Besenval's memoirs. He is right in saying that M. Campan led him through the upper corridors of the château, and introduced him into an apartment unknown to him; but the air of romance given to the interview is equally culpable and ridiculous. M. de Besenval says that he found himself, without knowing how he came there, in a plain apartment, but very conveniently furnished, of the existence of which he was till then utterly ignorant. He was astonished, he adds, not that the Queen should have so many facilities, but that she should have ventured to procure them. Ten printed sheets of the woman Lamotte’s impure libels contain nothing so injurious to the character of Marie Antoinette as these lines, written by a man whom she honoured by kindness thus undeserved. He could not possibly have had any opportunity of knowing the existence of these apartments, which consisted of a very small ante-chamber, a bedchamber and a closet. Ever since the Queen had occupied her own apartment this had been appropriated to Her Majesty’s lady of honour in cases of confinement or sickness, and was actually in such use when the Queen was confined. It was so important that it should not be known the Queen had spoken to the Baron before the duel that she had determined to go through her inner room into this little apartment to which M. Campan was to conduct him. When men write upon times still in remembrance they should be scrupulously exact, and not indulge in any exaggerations or constructions of their own.11

  The Baron died in 1791, a year before the infamous massacre of the Swiss Guard at the Tuileries.

  Armand Louis de Gontaut Biron, Duc de Lauzun (1747–1793) was a military hero and author of a memoir as well as being a courtier at Versailles during the reign of Louis XVI. He could easily have been the model for Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons in that no woman was free from his advances, not even the Queen of France. His mother died giving birth to him; he was brought up by his aunt, the Duchesse de Choiseul, wife of the Choiseul. Therefore it can be said that Lauzun was brought up in the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour, his aunt and uncle being part of her inner circle. Lauzun joined the Swiss Guards while still a teen. At nineteen he married a fourteen year old girl, Amélie de Boufflers, granddaughter and heiress of the Maréchal de Luxembourg, but he never cared for her; the marriage was a failure. A friend of Madame de Guéménée’s, Lauzun managed to have the Princesse introduce him to the Queen. He invited Antoinette to see his horse in a race, which she found thrilling, and so he arranged other races. The Queen soon discovered his bad reputation, revealed to her by Mercy and the Abbé Vermond; it was not to her liking. However, she continued to allow him access to her presence, which was perhaps unwise on her part. She once admired the heron plume on Lauzun’s hat; he gave it to her, which was awkward, because she wanted to refuse it, but did not wish to offend. She wore it once, hoping he would see her gratitude, and let the matter pass. Instead, he came to see her, making unwanted overtures so that she had to order him from the room. “That man shall never again come within my doors,” she said to Madame Campan.12 Antoinette, knowing what he was, prevented him from positions of power in the military. Neither would she intervene on his behalf when Madame de Guéménée importuned her for lettres d'etat, to save him from his creditors. Lauzun went from being an admirer of the Queen to being her enemy, joining the faction of the Duc d’Orléans, and eventually the Revolution, along with his close friend Talleyrand. Lauzun fought in the Vendée against the Royal and Catholic Army. Nevertheless, his fellow revolutionaries disliked his aristocratic hauteur. He was arrested and guillotined in January 1794; his neglected wife was guillotined a few months later.13

  “Count Hans Axel von Fersen”

  17 The Fersen Legend

  “I have made inquiries and sought information with zeal aud caution, and asked persons attached to the Court and the Queen, and found my veneration for her virtue confirmed in every respect.”—Comte d’Hézècques, former page at Versailles

  Too often in the many articles and books about Antoinette, Count Axel von Fersen is referred to as the “Queen’s lover” or as her “probable lover.” Surfing the internet anyone can see that the Fersen myth is deeply entrenched in the public mind. This is due to major publishers yearly churning out sensational biographies and novels, which focus on the legend rather than on the facts, scouring letters and diaries for the slightest indication that Antoinette and Count Fersen may have slept together. It is repeatedly disregarded that according to the reliable historical evidence Count Fersen and Antoinette were merely friends, and that he was as much her husband’s friend as he was hers. People are free to speak of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour as “lovers” since they openly lived together for many years, as well as Louis XV and Madame du Barry, or Philippe Égalité and Madame de Genlis. There are many famous lovers in history: Antony and Cleopatra, John of Gaunt and Katharine Swynford, Napoleon and Josephine, Lord Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton and for all of them abundant facts determine that they were, indeed, lovers. In the case of Antoinette and Fersen, innuendo is passed off as fact and supposition is accepted as truth. To speak that way of Antoinette, who was known for her chaste behavior and moral rectitude among her circle of close friends, of whom the Prince de Ligne, said: “Her soul was as white as her face,” who lost her life because she chose to stay at her husband’s side, is the height of irresponsibility.1

  The accounts of those whose personal knowledge of the Queen, or deep study of her life, reveal her virtue, as well as her fidelity and devotion to her husband, are continually ignored. To quote the words of her page, the Comte d' Hézècques:

  She was always a most tender mother, and always retained the affections of her husband, as an unfaithful wife can never do. The duties of religion always had her full attention, not following them as vigorously as her mother, but taking example by the King, and he was as attentive as possible amid the turmoil of Royalty. Childless during the earlier part of her union to a spouse who professed to devote his leisure from royal duties to hunting and study, the Queen collected companions of her own, and among them were some young men. Thence arose the shocking stories put down to the credit of that unhappy princess. And yet vice lurks concealed while these visits were quite in public; besides, if the Count de Fersen and MM. de Vaudreuil and de Coigny were admitted to her society, old Besenval was summoned there as well. All these calumnies have come to an end these ten years, for they have lost their purpose. And though by this time all danger that might have arisen from the publication of a criminal intrigue with the Queen has vanished, and all the actors in these fictitious scenes of shame are yet alive, not one of the anecdotes that were propagated at the beginning of the Revolution has been confirmed, and all the dreadful stories are buried in complete silence. I have made inquiries and sought information with zeal aud caution, and asked persons attached to the Court and the Queen, and found my veneration for her virtue confirmed in every respect.2

  Count Fersen was in the service of his sovereign King Gustavus III and his presence at the French court needs to be seen in the light of that capacity. The Swedish King was a devoted friend of Louis XVI and Antoinette and Gustavus, even more than the Queen’s Austrian relatives, worked to aid the King and Queen of France in their time of troubles. Fersen was the go-between in the various top secret plans to help Louis XVI regain control of his kingdom and escape from the clutches of his political enemies. The diplomatic intrigues that wen
t on behind the scenes are more interesting than any imaginary romance. However, books and movies continue to add this sensationalism to the Queen’s life, as if anything could be more sensational than the reality. Serious modern and contemporary scholars, however, such as Thomas Carlyle, the Goncourts, Imbert de Saint-Amand, Maxime de le Rocheterie, G. Lenôtre, Pierre de Nolhac, Paul and Pierrette Girault de Coursac, Hilaire Belloc, Nesta Webster, Simone Bertière, Philippe Delorme, Jean Chalon, Desmond Seward, Jean Petitfils, Frances Mossiker and Simon Schama are unanimous in saying that there is no conclusive evidence to prove that Antoinette violated her marriage vows by dallying with Count Fersen.

  The origins of the legend of Antoinette’s affair with Fersen began not with her revolutionary foes, who certainly would have picked up on anything of that nature to discredit the Queen at her trial. Fersen’s name came up at the trial only in regard to the fact that he had driven the Royal Family’s coach out of Paris in June 1791 as they tried to escape to Montmédy. It was a courtier, the Comte de Saint-Priest, who made insinuations about the Queen and Fersen in his memoirs, probably to cover the humiliation that Fersen had slept with Madame de Saint-Priest, his wife. Madame de la Tour du Pin, a former lady-in-waiting of the Queen, in her memoirs mentions that “the Count de Fersen, said to be Queen Marie-Antoinette’s lover, also came to see us everyday.” She says this in a paragraph about her childhood where she is discussing the various men who, according to gossip, were “considered” to be in love with with her own mother, Madame Dillon. So the Fersen affair is lumped in with what must be seen as frivolous court gossip.3