Marie Antoinette Read online

  NAN A. TALESE

  Doubleday

  NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO

  SYDNEY AUCKLAND

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  FAMILY TREES

  MAP OF EUROPE 1770

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PART ONE • MADAME ANTOINE

  CHAPTER ONE • A SMALL ARCHDUCHESS

  CHAPTER TWO • BORN TO OBEY

  CHAPTER THREE • GREATNESS

  CHAPTER FOUR • SENDING AN ANGEL

  PART TWO • THE DAUPHINE

  CHAPTER FIVE • FRANCE’S HAPPINESS

  CHAPTER SIX • IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE WORLD

  CHAPTER SEVEN • STRANGE BEHAVIOUR

  CHAPTER EIGHT • LOVE OF A PEOPLE

  PART THREE • QUEEN CONSORT

  CHAPTER NINE • IN TRUTH A GODDESS

  CHAPTER TEN • AN UNHAPPY WOMAN?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN • YOU SHALL BE MINE . . .

  CHAPTER TWELVE • FULFILLING THEIR WISHES

  PART FOUR • QUEEN AND MOTHER

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN • THE FLOWERS OF THE CROWN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN • ACQUISITIONS

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN • ARREST THE CARDINAL!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN • MADAME DEFICIT

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN • CLOSE TO SHIPWRECK

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • HATED, HUMBLED, MORTIFIED

  PART FIVE • THE AUSTRIAN WOMAN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN • HER MAJESTY THE PRISONER

  CHAPTER TWENTY • GREAT HOPES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE • DEPARTURE AT MIDNIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO • UP TO THE EMPEROR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE • VIOLENCE AND RAGE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR • THE TOWER

  PART SIX • WIDOW CAPET

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE • UNFORTUNATE PRINCESS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX • THE HEAD OF ANTOINETTE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN • EPILOGUE

  NOTES

  SOURCES

  INDEX

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY ANTONIA FRASER

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  FOR HAROLD

  THE FIRST READER

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Et in Arcadia Ego: even in Arcadia death is lurking. Madame de Staël, thinking of the “brilliance and gaiety” of Marie Antoinette’s early life in contrast to her later sufferings, was reminded of Poussin’s great picture on the theme of the omnipresence of death: the revelling shepherds in the forest glade brought up short by the sight of a tomb with this menacing inscription. Yet hindsight can make bad history. In writing this biography, I have tried not to allow the sombre tomb to make its presence felt too early. The elegiac should have its place as well as the tragic, flowers and music as well as revolution and counter-revolution. Above all, I have attempted, at least so far as is humanly possible, to tell Marie Antoinette’s dramatic story without anticipating its terrible ending.

  My concern, as the subtitle of the book indicates, has been to trace the twofold journey of the Austrian-born French Queen. On the one hand, this was an important political journey from her homeland to act as an ambassadress—or agent—in a predominantly hostile country where she was nicknamed in advance L’Autrichienne. On the other hand, there was her journey of personal development from the inadequate fourteen-year-old bride to a very different mature woman, twenty odd years later.

  In the course of tracing this journey, I have hoped to unravel the cruel myths and salacious distortions surrounding her name. Principal among them must be the notorious incident which has Marie Antoinette urging the poor, being without bread, to eat cake. This story was first told about the Spanish Princess who married Louis XIV a hundred years before the arrival of Marie Antoinette in France; it continued to be repeated about a series of other Princesses throughout the eighteenth century. As a handy journalistic cliché, it may never die. Yet, not only was the story wrongly ascribed to Marie Antoinette in the first place, but such ignorant behaviour would have been quite out of character. The unfashionably philanthropic Marie Antoinette would have been far more likely to bestow her own cake (or brioche) impulsively upon the starving people before her. On the subject of the Queen’s sex life—insatiable lover? voracious lesbian? heroine of a single romantic passion?—I have similarly tried to exert common sense in an area which must remain forever speculative (as indeed it was in her own day).

  Biographers have their small private moments of perception, the importance of which was recognized by the Goncourt brothers, admiring biographers of the Queen in 1858: “a time of which one does not have a dress sample and a dinner menu, is a time dead to us, an irrecoverable time.” Lafont d’Aussone, author of an early post-Restoration study (1824), found an ear of wheat made out of silver thread on the floor of the Queen’s former bedroom at Saint Cloud during a sale and pocketed it. Two hundred years after the death of Marie Antoinette, I found the experience of being asked to don white gloves to inspect the tiny swatches in her Wardrobe Book at the Archives Nationales both appropriate and affecting, the pinpricks made by the Queen to indicate her choice of the day’s costume being still visible. I had, however, no desire to emulate Lafont d’Aussone’s act of pious theft—if only because two gendarmes stood close behind my chair.

  The Baronne d’Oberkirch, writing her memoirs just before the deluge, gave an unforgettable vignette of the aristocrats returning from an all-night ball at Versailles in their carriages, with the peasants already doing their rounds in the bright morning sunshine: “What a contrast between their calm and satisfied visages and our exhausted appearance! The rouge had fallen from our cheeks, the powder from our hair . . . not a pretty sight.” Such a vision seems to sum up the contrasts of the ancien régime in France—including the Baronne’s innocent assumption that the peasants were calm and satisfied. Certainly the wealth of female testimonies to the period and to the life of Marie Antoinette gave special immediacy to my researches. The women who survived felt an urgent need to relive the trauma and record the truth, a compulsion often modestly disguised as a little gift to their descendants: “c’est pour vous, mes enfants . . .” wrote Pauline de Tourzel, an eye-witness to some of the horrific incidents of the early Revolution, at the start of her reminiscences. Probably no queen in history has been so well served by her female chroniclers.

  In a book written in English about a French (and Austrian) subject, there is an obvious problem to do with translation. Nor does it have an easy solution. What is tiresomely obscure for one reader may be gratingly obvious to another. On the whole I have preferred to translate rather than not in the interests of clarity. With names and titles I have also placed the need for clarity above consistency; even if some decisions may seem arbitrary in consequence, intelligibility has been the aim. Where eighteenth-century money is concerned, it is notoriously difficult to provide any idea of the modern equivalent so on the whole I have avoided doing so. However, one recent estimate equated a pound sterling in 1790 to £45 in 1996; there were roughly 24 livres to the pound in the reign of Louis XVI.1 As ever, it has been my pleasure and privilege to do my own research, except where individuals are specifically and most gratefully acknowledged. The references are, with equal gratitude, listed in the Notes and Sources.

  I wish to thank H.M. the Queen for permission to use and quote from the Royal Archives, and also Lady de Bellaigue, Keeper of the Royal Archives, Windsor. I thank the Duke of Devonshire for permission to quote from the Devonshire Collections and Mr. Peter Day, Keeper of the Collection, Chatsworth; also Dr. Amanda Foreman and Ms. Caroline Chapman who supplied me with references to the 5th Duke’s Collection. Ms. Jane Dormer gave permission for me to quote from Lady Elizabeth Foster’s (unpublished) Journal; Dr. Robin Eagles let me read his D.Phil. thesis �
��Francophilia and Francophobia in English Society 1748–1783,” Oxford, 1996 (since published). Jessica Beer was invaluable in helping me to set up research in the Hofburg, Vienna, and accompanied me on expeditions into the scenes of Marie Antoinette’s childhood; Christina Burton did useful Fersen research in Sweden; Fr. Francis Edwards S.J. directed me towards canonical references; Professor Dan Jacobson supplied material about the early Judaic history of the Scapegoat; Cynthia Liebow was at all times a highly able enabler in Paris; Katie Mitchell pointed me towards Genet’s feelings for Marie Antoinette; Mrs. Bernadette Peters, former Archivist, Coutts Bank, researched their archives there for me; Mlle. Cécile Coutin, Vice Présidente de l’Association Marie-Antoinette, supplied information about Marie Antoinette’s compositions and the 1993 commemoration; Mr. J. E. A. Wickham, M.S., M.D., B. Sc., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.R., gave advice on phimosis. I am much indebted for conversations, advice and critical comments to Dr. Philip Mansel, M. Bernard Minoret, Dr. Robert Oresko and Dr. John Rogister. Professor T. C. W. Blanning read the manuscript for errors, the remaining ones being, of course, my own.

  The Vicomte de Rohan, Président, Société des Amis de Versailles, was a distinguished guide to the secrets of Versailles. I wish to thank Doktor Lauger, Press Attaché to the President of the Austrian Republic, for access to the room in which Marie Antoinette was born, and Mag. Christina Schütz, IIASA, Laxenburg, for my visit there. The Austrian Tourist Board was helpful with current information about Mariazell; as were Gendarme Klein of the Varennes-en-Argonne Gendarmerie, Madame Vagnère of the Sainte Ménehould Tourist Office and the Gendarmerie at Sainte Menehould with information relevant to the flight to Varennes.

  A host of people assisted me in a variety of ways: Mr. Arthur Addington; Mr. Rodney Allen; Dr. L. R. I. Baker; Professor Colin Bonwick; Mrs. Anka Begley; Ms. Sue Bradbury, Folio Society; Professor John Beckett; Dr. Joseph Baillio; Dr. David Charlton; Dr. Eveline Cruickshanks; Professor John Ehrman; Mrs. Gila Falkus and my god-daughter Helen Falkus to whom the possibility of this project was first confided; Mr. Julian Fellowes; Mme. Laure de Grammont; Mr. Ivor Guest; Mrs. Sue Hopson; Dr. Rana Kabbani; Mrs. Linda Kelly; Dr. Ron Knowles; M. Karl Lagerfeld; Ms. Jenny Mackilligan; Mr. Ben Macintyre; Mr. Bryan Maggs of Maggs Bros.; Mr. Alastair Macaulay; Mr. Paul Minet, Royalty Digest; Mr. Geoffrey Munn of Wartski; Mr. David Pryce-Jones; Mrs. Julia Parker D.F. Astrol.S.; Professor Pamela Pilbeam; Mrs. Juliet Pennington; Mrs. Renata Propper; Professor Aileen Ribeiro; Lord Rothschild; Sir Roy Strong; Mme. Chantal Thomas; Lord Thomas of Swynnerton; Mr. Alex M. Thomson; M. Roland Bossard, Château de Versailles, Chargé d’études documentaires; Mr. Francis Wyndham; Ms. Charlotte Zeepvat.

  The staff of the following libraries deserve thanks: the British Library; in Paris the Archives Nationales and Mme. Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, and the Bibliothèque Nationale; the Public Record Office and Dr. A. S. Bevan, Reader Information Service Dept.; the Victoria and Albert Museum Library; in Vienna, the Hofburg Haus-Archiv. My publishers on both sides of the Atlantic—Nan Talese, Anthony Cheetham, Ion Trewin and my excellent editor Rebecca Wilson—were extremely helpful; as were my agent Mike Shaw and my assistant Linda Peskin at her magic machine. The incomparable Douglas Matthews did the index.

  Members of my family were as usual highly supportive, in particular my “French family,” Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni and Jean Pierre Cavassoni, while my brother Thomas Pakenham supplied an interesting botanical reference. I am also much indebted to my daughter Flora Fraser; with her knowledge of the eighteenth century and its sources, she guided me in particular at Windsor. Lastly, like everyone who has studied Marie Antoinette in the present time, I owe an enormous debt to Liliane de Rothschild. Her unrivalled mixture of erudition and enthusiasm has been a constant inspiration during the five years I worked on this book; in her own words: Vive la Reine!

  ANTONIA FRASER

  Feast of All Saints 2000

  CHAPTER ONE

  A SMALL ARCHDUCHESS

  “Her Majesty has been very happily delivered of a small, but completely healthy Archduchess.”

  COUNT KHEVENHüLLER, COURT CHAMBERLAIN, 1755

  On 2 November 1755 the Queen-Empress was in labour all day with her fifteenth child. Since the experience of childbirth was no novelty, and since Maria Teresa, Queen of Hungary by inheritance, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire by marriage, hated to waste time, she also laboured in another way at her papers. For the responsibilities of government were not to be lightly cast aside; in her own words: “My subjects are my first children.” Finally, at about half past eight in the evening in her apartments at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Maria Teresa gave birth. It was a girl. Or, as the Court Chamberlain, Count Khevenhüller, described the event in his diary: “Her Majesty has been happily delivered of a small, but completely healthy Archduchess.” As soon as was practical, Maria Teresa returned to work, signing papers from her bed.1

  The announcement was made by the Emperor Francis Stephen. He left his wife’s bedroom, after the usual Te Deum and Benediction had been said. In the Mirror Room next door the ladies and gentlemen of the court who had the Rights of Entry were waiting. Maria Teresa had firmly ended the practice, so distasteful to the mother in labour (but still in place at the court of Versailles), by which these courtiers were actually present in the delivery room. As it was they had to content themselves with congratulating the happy father. It was not until four days later that those ladies of the court who by etiquette would formerly have been in the bedchamber were allowed to kiss the Empress. Other courtiers, including Khevenhüller, were permitted the privilege on 8 November, and a further set the next day. Perhaps it was the small size of the baby, perhaps it was the therapeutic effect of working at her papers throughout the day, but Maria Teresa had never looked so well after a delivery.2

  The Empress’s suite of apartments was on the first floor of the so-called Leopoldine wing of the extensive and rambling Hofburg complex.*01 The Habsburgs had lived in the Hofburg since the late thirteenth century, but this wing had originally been constructed by the Emperor Leopold I in 1660. It was rebuilt following a fire, then greatly renovated by Maria Teresa herself. It lay south-west of the internal courtyard known as In Der Burg. Swiss Guards, that doughty international force that protects royalty, gave their name to the adjacent courtyard and gate, the Schweizerhof and the Schweizertor.

  The next stage in the new baby’s life was routine. She was handed over to an official wet-nurse. Great ladies did not nurse their own children. For one thing, breastfeeding was considered to ruin the shape of the bosom, made so visible by eighteenth-century fashions. The philandering Louis XV openly disliked the practice for this reason. The traditional prohibition against husbands sleeping with their wives during this period probably counted for more with Maria Teresa, an enthusiast for the marital double-bed and the conception—if not the nursing—of ever increasing numbers of babies. As the Empress said of herself, she was insatiable on the subject of children.3

  Marie Antoinette was put into the care of Constance Weber, wife of a magistrate. Constance, according to her son Joseph Weber, who later wrote his memoirs, was famed for her beautiful figure and an even greater beauty of soul. She had been nursing little Joseph for three months when she took over the baby Archduchess, and it was understood in the family that Constance’s appointment would improve all their fortunes. As the foster-brother of an archduchess, Joseph Weber benefited all his life; there were pensions for Constance as well as his other brothers and sisters. During Marie Antoinette’s childhood, Maria Teresa took her to visit the Weber household; there she showered gifts upon the children and, according to Joseph, admonished Constance: “Good Weber, have a care for your son.”4

  Maria Teresa was thirty-eight years old and since her marriage nearly twenty years earlier, she had produced four Archdukes as well as ten Archduchesses (of whom seven were living in 1755). The extraordinarily high survival rate of the imperial family—by the standards of infant mortality of the time—meant that there
was no urgent pressure upon the Queen-Empress to produce a fifth son. In any case it seems that Maria Teresa had expected a daughter. One of her courtiers, Count Dietrichstein, wagered against her that the new baby would be a boy. When the appearance of a girl, said to be as like her mother as two drops of water, meant that he lost the bet, the Count had a small porcelain figure made of himself, on his knees, proffering verses by Metastasio to Maria Teresa. He may have lost his wager but if the new-born augusta figlia resembled her mother, then all the world would have gained.5

  If the birth of an eighth surviving daughter was not in itself a disappointment, was there not perhaps something inauspicious about the date itself, 2 November? This, the Feast of All Souls, was the great Catholic Day of the Dead, when the departed were solemnly commemorated in a series of requiem Masses, in churches and chapels heavily draped in black. What this actually meant during the childhood of Marie Antoinette was that her birthday was generally celebrated on its eve, the Feast of All Saints, a day of white and gold. Besides which, 13 June, the feast of her patron saint St. Antony, tended to be regarded as Marie Antoinette’s personal day of celebration, just as the feast of St. Teresa of Avila on 15 October was the name-day of her mother.6

  If one looks to influences, the baby born on the sombre Day of the Dead must have been conceived on or around a far more cheerful feast of the church: 2 February, the traditionally candle-lit celebration of the Purification of the Virgin Mary. An episode during the Empress’s pregnancy could also be seen as significant. In April, Christoph Willibald Gluck was engaged by Maria Teresa to compose “theatrical and chamber music” in exchange for an official salary; this followed his successes in Italy and England as well as in Vienna. A court ball at the palace of Laxenburg, fifteen miles from Vienna, on 5 May 1755, marked his inauguration in this role.7 Two tastes that would impress themselves upon Marie Antoinette—a love of the “holiday” palace of Laxenburg and a love of the music of Gluck—could literally be said to have been inculcated in her mother’s womb.