Marie Antoinette: The Journey Read online

  In contrast, the fact that a colossal earthquake took place in Lisbon on 2 November, with 30,000 killed, was not at the time seen as relevant. This was an age of poor European communications and news of the disaster did not reach Vienna until some time afterwards. It was true that the King of Portugal and his wife had been engaged to stand as the coming baby’s godparents; the unfortunate royal couple had to flee from their capital at about the time Marie Antoinette was born. But, once again, this was not known at the time. In any case, royalties were not expected to be present at the event; according to custom, proxies were appointed in their absence: the baby’s eldest brother, Joseph, and her eldest sister, Marianne, aged fourteen and seventeen respectively.

  The baptism took place at noon on 3 November (baptisms were always held speedily and in the absence of the mother, who was allowed to recover from her ordeal). The Emperor went with a cortège to the Church of the Augustine Friars, the traditional church used by the court, and heard Mass, including the sermon. After that, at twelve o’clock, as Count Khevenhüller noted in his meticulous diary, which is an important source for our knowledge of events in Maria Teresa’s family, the baptism was held in “the new and beautiful Anticamera” and performed by “our Archbishop,” since the new Papal Nuncio had not yet made a formal appearance at court.8 The imperial family sat in a row on a long bench. Two galas were ordered: a great gala for the day of the baptism, and a lesser gala for the day after. On 5 and 6 November there were two more spectacles that were shown to the public for free, and on those days there was no charge to the public for entry at the city gates. It was all a very well established ritual.

  The baby in whose honour these celebrations were held was given the names Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna. The prefix of Maria had been established for all Habsburg princesses in the days of the baby’s great-grandfather, the Emperor Leopold I and his third wife Eleanora of Neuburg; it was intended to signify the special veneration of the Habsburg family for the Virgin Mary.9 Obviously in a bevy of eight sisters (and a mother) all enjoying the same hallowed prefix, it was not going to be used for everyone all the time. In fact the new baby would be called Antoine in the family.

  The French diminutive of the baptismal name, Antoine, was significant. Viennese society was multilingual, people being able to make themselves easily understood in Italian and Spanish as well as in German and French. But it was French, acknowledged as the language of civilization, that was the universal language of courts throughout Europe; Frederick II of Prussia, Maria Teresa’s great rival, for example, preferred his beloved French to German. It was French that was used in diplomatic despatches to the Habsburgs. Maria Teresa spoke French, although with a strong German accent (she also spoke the Viennese dialect), but the Emperor Francis Stephen spoke French all his life, not caring to learn German. In this way, both in the family circle and outside it, Maria Antonia was quickly transmogrified into Antoine, the name she also used to sign her letters. To courtiers, the latest archduchess was to be known as Madame Antoine.

  Charming, sophisticated, lazy and pleasure-loving, an inveterate womanizer who adored his wife and family, Francis Stephen of Lorraine handed on to Marie Antoinette a strong dose of French blood. His mother Elisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans had been a French royal princess and a granddaughter of Louis XIII. Her brother, the Duc d’Orléans, had acted as Regent during the childhood of Louis XV. As for Francis Stephen himself, although he had Habsburg blood on his father’s side and was adopted into the Viennese court in 1723 at the age of fourteen, it was important to him that he was by birth a Lorrainer. From 1729, when his father died, he was hereditary Duke of Lorraine, a title that stretched back to the time of Charlemagne. This notional Lorrainer inheritance would also feature in the consciousness of Marie Antoinette, even though Francis Stephen was obliged to surrender the actual duchy in 1735. It was part of a complicated European deal whereby Louis XV’s father-in-law, who had been dispossessed as King of Poland, received the Duchy of Lorraine for the duration of his lifetime; it then became part of the kingdom of France. In return Francis Stephen was awarded the Duchy of Tuscany.

  The renunciation of his family heritage in order to soothe France was presented to Francis Stephen as part of a package that would enable him to marry Maria Teresa. On her side, it was a passionate love match. The British ambassador to Vienna reported that the young Archduchess “sighs and pines all night for her Duke of Lorraine. If she sleeps, it is only to dream of him. If she wakes, it is but to talk of him to the lady-in-waiting.”10 Wilfully, in a way that would be in striking contradiction to the precepts she preached as a mother, Maria Teresa set her heart against a far grander suitor, the heir to the Spanish throne. The medal struck for the wedding bore the inscription (in Latin): “Having at length the fruit of our desires.”

  The desires in question, however, did not include the bridegroom’s continued enjoyment of his hereditary possessions. As his future father-in-law Charles VI crudely put it: “No renunciation, no Archduchess.”11 Maria Teresa of course believed in total wifely submission, at least in theory, another doctrine that she would expound assiduously to her daughters. Her solution was to tolerate and even encourage her husband’s Lorrainer relations at court, as well as a multitude of Lorrainer hangers-on.

  The marriage of Maria Teresa’s sister Marianna to Francis Stephen’s younger brother Charles of Lorraine strengthened these ties; Marianna’s early death left Maria Teresa with a sentimental devotion to her widower. Then there was Francis Stephen’s attachment to his unmarried sister Princess Charlotte, Abbess of Remiremont, who was a frequent visitor. She shared her brother’s taste for shooting parties, in which she personally participated. In the year of Marie Antoinette’s birth, a party of twenty-three, three of them ladies, killed nearly 50,000 head of game and wild deer. Princess Charlotte fired over 9000 shots, nearly as many as the Emperor. This strong-minded woman was so devoted to her native Lorraine that she once said she was prepared to travel there barefoot.12

  Thus Marie Antoinette was brought up to think of herself as “de Lorraine” as well as “d’Autriche et de Hongrie.” In the meantime Lorraine had become a foreign principality attached to France, so that princes of Lorraine who made their lives in France had the status of “foreign princes” only and were not accorded the respect due to foreign royalties nor that due to French dukes. This ambiguous status was one from which the foreign princes ever sought to escape, while those of superior birth in French courtly terms sought to hold them down. A seemingly small point of French etiquette—small at least to outsiders—was to be of considerable significance in the future of Francis Stephen’s daughter.

  This was an age of multiple intermarriage where royal houses were concerned. Insofar as one can simplify it purely in terms of her four grandparents, Marie Antoinette had the blood of the Bourbons—the Orléans branch—and of Lorraine on her father’s side. More remotely, her Orléans great-grandmother, a Palatine princess known as Liselotte, brought her the blood of Mary Queen of Scots via Elizabeth of Bohemia—but this was to go back 200 years. On the maternal side, Marie Antoinette inherited German blood from her grandmother Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Wolfbüttel, once described as “the most beautiful queen on earth.” Her appearance at the age of fourteen enchanted her husband Charles VI: “Now that I have seen her, everything that has been said about her is but a shadow devoured by the light of the sun.”13 However, if exceptional beauty was to be found in the pool of genes that Marie Antoinette might inherit, it was also true that the lovely Empress became immensely large and dropsical in later years.

  Lastly, Marie Antoinette inherited the Habsburg blood, both Austrian and Spanish, of her grandfather the Emperor Charles VI. These two branches of the Habsburg family, which had in theory divided in the sixteenth century, were in fact the result of constant intermarriage, like great rivers whose tributaries flowed into each other so frequently that their waters were inextricably mingled. The failure of the direct Spanish Habsburg line in 1700 le
d to the accession of a French Bourbon prince, the grandson of Louis XIV, to the Spanish throne (via his Spanish Habsburg grandmother) despite the efforts of the then Archduke Charles who was the rival pretender.

  In 1711, however, the death of the Emperor Joseph I, leaving only two daughters, meant that Charles as his younger brother inherited the Austrian dominions. He was elected as Holy Roman Emperor shortly afterwards. Although unable to claim the imperial throne, Joseph’s daughters married respectively the Electors of Bavaria and Saxony to provide a plethora of descendants, who would spin webs of alliance and intrigue throughout Europe in the eighteenth century. In the meantime, by one of those historical ironies, Charles VI himself was unable to produce a male heir. He too was left with two daughters, of whom the elder, Maria Teresa, was now to be transformed into his heiress.

  Charles VI’s attempts to secure the inheritance of Maria Teresa by, in effect, bribing other European powers to respect the arrangement was known as the Pragmatic Sanction. For all these efforts, his death in 1740 merely unleashed a new dynastic struggle, the eight-year War of the Austrian Succession. Silesia was immediately conquered by the Prussian King: this was the most prosperous region under the Habsburg dominion and the twenty-three-year-old Maria Teresa felt the loss keenly. It seemed that she was doomed to preside over the dismemberment of the once great Habsburg Empire. In her own words: “It would not be easy to find in history an example of a crowned head acceding to government in more unfavourable circumstances than I did myself.”14

  It was a measure of the greatness of Maria Teresa that fifteen years later, at the time of Marie Antoinette’s birth, she was in fact wreathed in triumph, admired throughout Europe as “the glory of her sex and the model of kings.” For all her losses in the war—at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 Maria Teresa still could not recover Silesia—she was nevertheless confirmed in her hereditary possessions. Apart from Upper and Lower Austria, these included Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic), Hungary, much of what is now Rumania, a portion of former Yugoslavia, as well as the Austrian Netherlands (approximately Belgium*02) and the Duchies of Milan and Tuscany in Italy. Meanwhile Francis Stephen had been elected Emperor.

  In 1755 the country was at peace, with memories of the War of Succession receding; the army was contented and a series of domestic reforms had taken place, thanks to Maria Teresa’s chancellor, Haugwitz. As a result the Empress was not only admired abroad but enjoyed popularity at home. For the twentieth anniversary of her wedding to Francis Stephen in February 1756, Maria Teresa gave a surprise children’s party in which all her children, even “the little Madame Antoine,” appeared in masks and costumes.15 That summed up the Empress’s domestic bliss. Of all the children of Maria Teresa, Marie Antoinette was the one who was born at the zenith of her mother’s glory.

  Six months after the birth of Marie Antoinette, a radical change in the national alliances of Europe put an end to this surface tranquillity. By the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 1 May 1756, Austria joined with her traditional enemy France in a defensive pact against Prussia. If either country was attacked, the other would come to its aid with an army specified to be 24,000 strong. No single event in Marie Antoinette’s childhood was to have a more profound influence on the course of her life than this alliance, forged while she was still in her cradle.

  It is not difficult to explain Austria’s hostility to Prussia: Maria Teresa had neither forgotten nor forgiven the Rape of Silesia which occurred at her accession, and she regularly referred to Frederick II as “the evil animal” and “the monster.” (He responded in kind by having a sermon preached pointedly on the text of St. Paul: “Let the woman learn in silence.”)16 France’s friendship with Prussia, on the other hand, had long been seen as the cornerstone of the latter’s foreign policy; but it had been eroded in a complex series of manoeuvres in which Prussia turned towards England. Not only had hostilities between France and England—rival colonial powers—already broken out in the Americas in 1754, but France also viewed England as an enemy in Europe. Since Austria, once England’s friend, felt similarly betrayed by the latter’s involvement with Prussia, the way was open for a diplomatic volte-face.

  Once the will, or rather the need, was there, personalities played their part. The French King Louis XV favoured the alliance, although his only son and heir, the Dauphin Louis Ferdinand, his daughter-in-law Maria Josepha (a Saxon princess), and his formidable array of grown-up daughters still at court, were all resolutely anti-Austrian. But the appointment of a pro-Austrian Foreign Minister, the Duc de Choiseul, meant that, for the time being at least, these family prejudices were unimportant. Meanwhile Maria Teresa’s own trusted servant Prince Kaunitz, convincing her that French support would enable her to reconquer Silesia, was sent as ambassador to Versailles in 1750. Maria Teresa, that pillar of conjugal virtue, was even accused (falsely) of despatching messages to the Marquise de Pompadour, Louis XV’s all-powerful mistress; there was an ugly rumour that the Empress had actually addressed the mistress as “cousin.” Afterwards Maria Teresa would indignantly deny this to the Electress Maria Antonia of Bavaria, one of Joseph I’s dispossessed daughters: “That channel would not have suited me.”17 Nevertheless the fact was that there was opportunism on both sides, and Maria Teresa was certainly not without her share of it.

  The imperial Austrian will was firm, as was the royal French will.*03 As Voltaire wittily expressed it: some people said that the union of France and Austria was an unnatural monstrosity, but since it was necessary, it turned out to be quite natural.18 Nevertheless the heart and mind of neither country were won over. As we shall see, Austria and Maria Teresa continued to admire France as the fountain of style, just as they continued to employ the French language. At the same time the French were regularly dismissed as frivolous, lightweight, incapable of constancy and so forth, compared with the “solidity and frankness” of the Germans (the word the Empress and her relations always used to describe themselves). It was an unfavourable stereotype, which could not fail to impress itself upon any child—say, a small archduchess—brought up at the Austrian court.

  The French for their part, conscious of their civilizing role, were not backward in their derision for customs other than their own. An alliance could not so easily sweep away the prejudices against Austria that had so long held sway, especially the suspicion that Austria might intend to manipulate and control France in its own best interests. This was a point of view that would impress itself upon another young person, for example, a young French prince, Louis Auguste, son of the Dauphin, brought up at the French court.

  The question of an alliance between an archduchess and a prince was not an academic one. Europe was now dividing into two powerful groups, whose rivalries in both the Old World and the New World would shortly lead to a seven-year-long war. Prussia, England and Portugal faced an alliance of Austria, France, Sweden and Saxony, to which Russia would soon be added; Spain, France’s fellow Bourbon monarchy, would also become involved on the French side. These various allies would shortly seek to express their future cooperation in the customary manner of the time: royal intermarriage.

  As it happened, the 1740s and 1750s had witnessed the birth of a multitude of young royals, both male and female, within the reigning families of these countries. Austria no longer lacked male heirs as it had under two successive emperors, Joseph I and Charles VI. The days when the direct line of the French monarchy was represented by the frail person of a single child, the great-grandson of Louis XIV (the future Louis XV), were over. Europe was positively crowded with small royal pawns, ready, as it seemed, to be employed in the great game of diplomatic alliance.

  In the separate but related Spanish branch of the Bourbon family, there was a number of princes and princesses available; for example Isabella, Maria Louisa and Don Ferdinand of Parma, the grandchildren of Louis XV by his favourite daughter known as “Madame Infante.” There were the children of the King of Spain: his heir the Prince of Asturias, another Maria L
ouisa and his younger son, Ferdinand, who assumed the throne of Naples. Then there were the princes and princesses of Savoy. This was a royal house with many historic links to France—Louis XV’s mother had been a Savoyard princess—more especially because Savoy’s geographical position in what is now northern Italy made it an excellent buffer against Austria. Lastly, of the major players, there were the princes and princesses at Versailles—the Children of France as they were proud to be termed. These were the French grandchildren of Louis XV, the family of his only son.

  All in all, fate or nature had provided abundant material for the older generation to weave their dynastic plots, be they Louis XV, Maria Teresa, Charles III of Spain or the reigning King of Sardinia, Charles Emmanuel III, grandfather of the Savoyard family. The so-called Family Pact of 1761, by which Maria Teresa’s heir, the Archduke Joseph, married Isabella of Parma, and Isabella’s younger sister married her first cousin, heir to the throne of Spain, was an outward manifestation of this. French Bourbons, Spanish Bourbons and Habsburgs were all joining together in opposition to Prussia and England.

  What then of the many Habsburg archduchesses who had been born in the space of roughly ten years and who were now joined by another sister? What of Marie Christine? Elizabeth? Amalia? Josepha? Joanna? Charlotte? (The eldest, Marianne, being disabled, was not considered a candidate for marriage.) Without any specific names being mentioned—one princess being much like another when it came to dynastic alliances—it was understood that three of the archduchesses might be destined for, in no particular order, Don Ferdinand of Parma, the young King Ferdinand of Naples—and maybe a French prince.