Marie Antoinette Read online

It was true that the Empress paraded her wifely deference to the Emperor; on the other hand it was she who worked day and night at her state papers and the Emperor who went happily off hunting. It was Maria Teresa who was the wonder of Europe for her strength and decisiveness, not Francis Stephen. To say the least of it, Maria Teresa presented a complicated role model to her daughters.

  Beneath the idyllic surface, there were also currents and rapids and shoals, jealousies and rivalries, which, however common to all large families, took on an added significance in a family of state. In effect the children of Maria Teresa and Francis Stephen, born between 1738 (Marianne) and 1756 (Max), fell into two groups. The first family—and the phrase was apt in more ways than one—consisted, besides the invalid Marianne, of the heir, Joseph, born on 13 March in 1741; Marie Christine born on 13 May, Maria Teresa’s own birthday, the following year; then came “the lovely Elizabeth” as she was known, born in August 1743. The Archduke Charles, born in 1745, died when young; the first family was completed by Amalia born in 1746, and Leopold in 1747.

  After that there was an artificial gap of five years caused by the birth and death of a daughter in 1748, compounded when the next-born daughter, Joanna, also died young. The third in line of the row of ill-fated daughters, Josepha, another beauty born in 1751, would not, as we shall see, survive either, with crucial effects on the fortunes of her two younger sisters. Thus the second family began with that Archduchess always called Charlotte by her siblings, just as Marie Antoinette was called Antoine, although she is known to history as Maria Carolina; she was born on 13 August 1752. There followed in quick succession Ferdinand, an extremely pretty little boy, Antoine, and Maximilian, a chubby baby later nicknamed plainly “Fat Max”; the three of them were born in the space of two and a half years.

  It will be seen that Madame Antoine’s position in the family was marked on the one hand by distance; the Archduke Joseph was nearly fifteen years older, old enough to be her father by the royal standards of the time. On the other hand this position was marked by closeness; sandwiched as she was between two brothers eighteen months older and thirteen months younger, Antoine’s share of maternal attention as a baby can hardly have been great. In any case Maria Teresa, in her late thirties and forties, was no longer the happy young mother who had greeted the birth of Joseph, the male heir, with ecstasy. In fact her energies were now dominated by affairs of state and the halcyon period during which Antoine had been conceived and born was over. From late 1756 until the Peace of Paris in February 1763—Antoine’s infant years—Austria was at war with Prussia and England, and Maria Teresa was at the helm. The Seven Years’ War was not a time of serenity for the Empress. Nor was the lost region of Silesia gloriously restored, as predicted by Kaunitz, at the subsequent peace, which marked no more than a stalemate between Austria and Prussia.

  Nevertheless it was Maria Teresa, however preoccupied, who was the central figure of her children’s lives and whose love—hopefully coupled with respect—they sought, even if, in the case of the younger ones, a strong dose of awe, even fear, was mingled with these feelings. Much later Marie Antoinette told a lady-in-waiting that she had never loved her mother, only feared her; but this was hindsight, when a great many unhappy adult experiences had distorted the simplicities of childhood. Her comment during her mother’s lifetime was probably nearer the truth: “I love the Empress but I’m frightened of her, even at a distance; when I’m writing to her, I never feel completely at ease.” The evidence of earlier times is of an adoring daughter who on occasion was quite pathetic in her desire to please. She dearly wanted to incarnate “our sweet Antoinette,” the personality at once engaging and docile designated for her by Maria Teresa.20

  Given the inexorable authority of the Empress, the clear favouritism that she exhibited for the Archduchess Marie Christine almost from her birth (was it the shared birthday?) was a source of great resentment to all the brothers and sisters. At one point Marianne was said to have been made ill by it.21 Joseph felt it; and when his wife, Isabella of Parma, that bride, half-French and half-Spanish Bourbon, bestowed on him by the Family Pact in 1761, also professed herself fascinated by Marie Christine, matters were only exacerbated. The phenomenon was so marked that one wonders, as with all parents who indulge in marked favouritism, why the Empress did not sometimes question it herself. On the contrary, Maria Teresa saw “Mimi,” or “la Marie” as her second surviving daughter was known, as the consolation that was owed to her by life.

  Outwardly Antoine resented the bossiness of this sister who was thirteen and a half years older than she; as she saw it, Marie Christine used her paramount position to make trouble with her mother. It was a view shared by her brother Leopold, who was much closer in age to Marie Christine, who denounced her scolding ways, her sharp tongue and, above all, her habit of “telling everything to the Empress.”22 Certainly Marie Christine had a strong streak of the “masculine” or masterful in her nature. This was inherited from Maria Teresa by more than one archduchess—Amalia and Maria Carolina, for example—but not by Marie Antoinette. At the same time Marie Christine was highly intelligent as well as artistically gifted; she was certainly the outstanding sister in that respect.

  It was easy as a result for Antoine to conceive a timid disinclination for the company of intellectual, brilliantly self-possessed older women, exactly the sort of sophisticated creatures who by tradition dominated French society. Amalia, although nearly ten years older, was a much less threatening figure; she was not so clever, not so interesting, not so pretty, not so graceful—and for all these reasons she was not so much loved by Maria Teresa. Although Antoine could cope with Amalia, the echoes of her childish jealousy for Mimi, as the years passed, would resonate ever more strongly.

  Antoine’s relationship with her closest sister in age, Charlotte, on the other hand, set quite a different pattern. The future Maria Carolina, three years her senior, was raised with Antoine almost as though they were twins. As Frederick the Great said of his relationship with his own sister: “These first bonds are indissoluble.” From Charlotte, Antoine learnt that loving relationships with delightful female contemporaries could be like bastions in an unkind or puzzling world. The very fact that for some years the two youngest Archduchesses escaped a great deal of official attention meant that they could bond happily with each other. They tended to share experiences; if one got ill, the other would catch the infection, and both would be segregated, then sent off to convalesce together.23

  These were two lively little girls; at the same time Charlotte was the dominant one, the protectress, Antoine the dependent one. Maria Teresa, besotted as she was with her Mimi, insistent as she was on obedience, nevertheless admired Charlotte’s spirit; she was, said the Empress, the one who most closely resembled herself. Perhaps it helped their symbiotic relationship that Charlotte and Antoine “resembled each other greatly,” as the painter Madame Vigée Le Brun later pointed out (portraits of the two can easily be mistaken).24 As children they shared the same big blue eyes, pink and white complexions, fair hair and longish noses; but for indefinable reasons, it all added up to feminine prettiness in Antoine. Charlotte, if “not as pretty,” was on the other hand attractive with a forceful personality.

  The marriage of Joseph to Isabella of Parma, which was intended to solidify the connection of Austria with the France of her grandfather Louis XV, did not in fact last long. In 1762 Isabella gave birth to a daughter, the Archduchess Teresa, and died a year later giving birth to a second daughter, who also died. The latter had been named Christine after the sister-in-law for whom Isabella had felt such a passion, comparing the two of them to Orpheus and Eurydice, following Gluck’s opera on the same subject. Broken-hearted, Joseph placed the matter of a second marriage, essential to produce an imperial heir, in the hands of his parents. After some arguments on the subject of rival German princesses in which Marie Christine favoured Cunegonde of Saxony, the choice was made of a Habtx1urg second cousin, Josepha of Bavaria.25

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sp; The wedding, at the end of January 1765, was celebrated with suitable magnificence. Gluck composed an operetta for the occasion, Il Parnasso Confusio, with a libretto by Metastasio. The Archduchess Elizabeth played Apollo, with Amalia, Josepha and Charlotte as Muses; the Archduke Leopold both conducted the orchestra and played the harpsichord. The ballet Il Trionfo d’Amore, which was considered the essential accompaniment to an opera, was danced by the younger children.26 A picture by Mytens shows Ferdinand and Antoine, shepherd and shepherdess, while Max, wings and all, enacts Cupid. Antoine is exquisitely poised, her famous deportment already in evidence, the graceful arms well displayed. Her face is also instantly recognizable, not so much for the characteristically long neck on which it is set, as for the significantly high forehead. The Mytens picture was one that Antoine herself loved and she would subsequently receive it with delight to adorn her personal haven.

  Six months later the courtly family bliss that this picture epitomized vanished utterly. The Emperor and Empress were setting out for Innsbruck in order to celebrate the marriage of their second surviving son, the Archduke Leopold to the Spanish King’s daughter. It was intended to be as splendid an occasion as could be conceived, in order to emphasize not only the majesty of both monarchies, but also the brilliant nature of the alliance. At the last moment the Emperor paused, and on some strange impulse rushed back to give the nine-year-old Antoine one more embrace. He took her on his knee and hugged her over and over again. Antoine noticed with surprise that he had tears in his eyes; leaving her was causing Francis Stephen great suffering. Twenty-five years later she still recalled the incident with pain; she believed that Francis Stephen had had some presentiment of the great unhappiness that would be her lot. For Madame Antoine never saw her father again.

  On 18 August 1765 at Innsbruck the Emperor died of a massive stroke. He had lived for fifty-six years and ten days, as Maria Teresa noted in a pathetic list of numbers, which went on to calculate the months, weeks, days and even the hours of his life. She added, “My happy married life lasted twenty-nine years and six months and six days,” and she listed the details of that period too, down to the hours: 258,774.27

  The devastation of the Empress was total. It was symbolic of her grief that she cut off the hair of which she had once been so proud, draped her apartments in sombre velvets, and herself wore nothing but widow’s black for the rest of her life. The strong young mother, who had once said cheerfully that she would have ridden into battle herself if she had not been perpetually pregnant, was transformed into a figure of tragic severity. Everything about her was and remained “dark and mournful.”28 Already awesome to her younger children, Maria Teresa now projected a universal dissatisfaction with their behaviour. It was rooted in her own personal unhappiness but nonetheless constituted a perpetual reproach to those who could still enjoy life and its pleasures.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GREATNESS

  “If one is to consider only the greatness of your position, you are the happiest of your sisters and all princesses.”

  MARIA TERESA TO MARIE ANTOINETTE, 1770

  The bereft Empress now shared her power—since part of it could only be enjoyed by a male—with her twenty-four-year-old son, who was elected Emperor (as Joseph II) to replace his father. But she allowed nothing, neither mourning nor Joseph’s promotion, to interrupt her sedulous policy of planning her children’s marriages. There were to be victims of this single-hearted application, giving new meaning to the celebrated family motto in Latin, which can be roughly translated as: “Others have to wage war [to succeed] but you, fortunate Habsburg, marry!” But there was one beneficiary of the Emperor’s untimely death, and that was the Archduchess Marie Christine.

  The favourite daughter had set her heart on a cousin on her mother’s side, Prince Albert of Saxony. This intelligent and sensitive young man, four years Marie Christine’s senior, had arrived in Vienna in 1759 with his younger brother Clement. Both fought in Maria Teresa’s army during the Seven Years’ War; Clement of Saxony went into the church and subsequently became Archbishop-Elector of Trier. Albert, however, fell in love with the lively young Archduchess as they shared a sledge on the way to Schönbrunn. Unfortunately for all his qualities, his intelligence and his artistic interests, Albert presented no sort of match for an Emperor’s daughter. A brother of the Dauphine Maria Josepha, he was the fourth son in the huge family of Augustus III of Saxony, King of Poland, and could offer no kind of position. In any case Francis Stephen had wanted Marie Christine to marry his sister’s son the Duke of Chablais, thus underlining the Lorrainer connection.

  The death of her father and the increased dependency of her mother on her Mimi gave Marie Christine her chance. She married Albert in April 1766. It was a brilliant stroke in more ways than one. First of all, Mimi had achieved that ultimate rarity among the marriages of princesses, a love match. That was in itself enough to arouse the jealousy of her sisters for whom less romantic fates were reserved. But there was more to envy. Since Albert was not a rich man, Maria Teresa proceeded to even things up. Marie Christine was given a huge dowry while Albert received the Duchy of Teschen which Maria Teresa acquired for him. The couple were promised jointly the reversion of the governorship of the Austrian Netherlands on the death of Maria Teresa’s brother-in-law Prince Charles of Lorraine. In the meantime Albert was made Governor of Pressburg in Hungary, with its vast castle on the Danube.

  After the wedding Maria Teresa was “childish enough,” in her own words, to hear her remaining daughters pass through her room and fancy that “my Mimi” was among them, instead of in her own home at Pressburg. In truth the position of Pressburg made it easy for the Empress to visit this young couple, whom she found it a pleasure to see together. Marie Christine also received the coveted award of a house of her own at Laxenburg. A year after the wedding Marie Christine nearly died in childbirth, and her baby daughter did die; there would be no more children. The consequence was that Marie Christine enjoyed the greatest prize of all, the constant gift of her mother’s company. As Marie Antoinette would write wistfully to Maria Teresa: “How I envy Marie [Christine] the happiness of seeing you so often!”1

  At the beginning of 1767 the Empress was left with five daughters on her hands. “The lovely Elizabeth” was twenty-three, Amalia nearly twenty-one, and Josepha, another beauty, was sixteen; then there was Charlotte, who would be fifteen in August, and Antoine, who was in her twelfth year. Due to her youth, the last named was not at this point a vital player in the imperial game, although she was mentioned vaguely in connection with her coevals, the French princes. This game might be termed that of “alliances and establishments”; the phrase was that of the memorialist Louis Dutens as he congratulated Maria Teresa on that mixture of “good fortune and address” that had brought her such success in setting up her children.2

  The two Ferdinands—of Parma and Naples, both born in 1751—were prizes that Maria Teresa was determined to secure, not so much for her daughters—whose individuality was of no moment—as for the sake of the alliances they would symbolize. Louis XV, advising his grandson Don Ferdinand of Parma, took a worldly-wise attitude to the whole matter: what did it matter who she was, so long as he got a suitable wife? It was true that it was easier to make love to a pretty woman than a plain one, but that was about the measure of the difference.3 Charles III of Spain on the other hand, as his father, objected to the choice of Amalia for Ferdinand of Naples since she was six years older than her prospective bridegroom. This made the sixteen-year-old Archduchess Josepha the obvious candidate for this Ferdinand. She was also delightfully pretty, pliant by nature and, for all these reasons, her brother the Emperor’s favourite.

  Then a series of disasters struck, making 1767 Maria Teresa’s annus horribilis. Already Marie Christine had lost her baby, and she herself had been seriously ill. Then the poor unloved Empress, Joseph’s second wife, died of smallpox at the end of May and was placed, as was the custom, in a tomb in the imperial crypt of the Hofburg.
*08 After that Maria Teresa herself caught smallpox, and came close enough to death to receive the Last Sacrament; Europe trembled at the news, while her own family was in shock.

  The next disaster was in fact indirectly caused by Maria Teresa herself. Once recovered, she insisted that her daughter, the Archduchess Josepha, who was on the verge of making her long bridal journey to Naples, go with her down into the imperial crypt to pray; it was intended as an act of filial piety. But the tomb of Joseph’s wife was not sufficiently sealed. As the anticipatory nuptial celebrations were in full swing in Vienna, the Archduchess caught smallpox. On 15 October—ironically enough Maria Teresa’s name-day—Josepha died. Leopold Mozart, among others, had attended the celebrations with young Wolfgang, hoping for profitable engagements. As he gloomily put it, in view of the cancellation of all public events: “The Princess Bride has become the bride of a heavenly bridegroom.” It was a terrible death, which left a permanent impression on her little sister. Antoine remembered Josepha taking her in her arms; with a grim premonition, Josepha told the girl that she was leaving her for ever—not for the kingdom of Naples but for the family vault.4

  That was not all. Smallpox stalked the royal houses of Europe like a spectre with a scythe. It was fortunate for Antoine personally that she had caught it at the age of two, in a mild version; having recovered completely except for a few practically invisible marks, she was immune to infection.5 At times, however, the scythe wounded but did not kill. The Archduchess Elizabeth also caught the disease; she lived but her beauty was utterly destroyed. It was a personal tragedy for the Archduchess, who had been extremely vain of her proverbial good looks; according to her mother, “It mattered not if the look of admiration came from a prince or a Swiss Guard, Elizabeth was satisfied.”6 But in public terms, it meant that she was immediately and ruthlessly eliminated from the European marriage market.*09