Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France
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Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte de Bourbon, Duchess of Angoulême and Dauphine of France (19 December 1778 – 19 October 1851), also known as La Princesse Royale or Madame Royale, was the eldest child of King Louis XVI and his Austrian wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. As the wife of the eldest surviving son of Charles X, she is considered by some to have been Queen of France for the 20 minutes between her father-in-law's signing of the instrument of abdication and her husband's own signing of the document.
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[edit] Childhood
Marie-Thérèse was the first child born to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Monarchists throughout France had prayed for the birth of a male to the royal couple, who had been married since 1770. However, the Queen greeted her daughter's birth with delight nonetheless. "Poor little thing," she said as they placed the baby in her arms, "you are not what they wanted, but we will love none the less. A son would have belonged to the State; you shall be mine, and have all my care; you shall share in my happiness and soften my sorrows." The baby princess was named after the queen's mother, the dowager Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa. She was styled the "Princess Royal" but known, as per court etiquette, as "Madame Royale".
Madame Royale's household was headed by her governess, the Princess of Guémenée, who was later replaced by the queen's closest friend – Gabrielle de Polastronk, Countess of Polignac. King Louis XVI was an affectionate father, who delighted in spoiling his daughter and giving her anything she wanted. Marie-Antoinette was stricter and was determined that her daughter should not grow up to be as haughty as some of the other Bourbon princesses. She often invited children from working-class districts to come and dine with Marie-Thérèse and encouraged the child to give her toys to the poor.
In contrast to the image of a materialistic Marie-Antoinette who ignored the plight of the poor, Marie-Antoinette had some of the most beautiful toys brought to Marie-Thérèse's nursery at New Year in 1784. "I should have liked to have given you all these as New Year's gifts," the queen said, "but the winter is very hard, there is a crowd of unhappy people who have no bread to eat, no clothes to wear, no wood to make a fire. I have given them all my money; I have none left to buy you presents, so there will be none this year."
Marie-Thérèse was joined in the nursery by a brother, Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François in 1781, Louis-Charles in 1785 and Sophie Hélène Béatrice in 1786.
However, the French Revolution was building outside the palace. Social discontent mixed with a crippling budget deficit provoked an outburst of anti-absolutist sentiment. By 1789, France was hurtling towards revolt as the result of bankruptcy due to the supporting of the American Revolution, drought, and famine, among many other problems aided by propagandists. These propagandists wrongly depicted Marie-Antoinette as engaging in all sorts of sexual perversions not the least of which were incest with her own son and a lesbian affair that never happened. Upon the fall of the Monarchy these attacks grew ever more vicious as newfound freedom of the press was not accompanied by commensurate restraint by editors and publishers. The queen's popularity was at an all-time low, due to her Austrian birth and a hate campaign generated against her by the Parisian gutter press. Tragedy struck closer to home when baby Princess Sophie-Béatrix died, to be followed not long after by the eldest boy's death. Prince Louis-Joseph died of consumption at the height of the political crisis in early 1789.
On 14 July the Bastille was captured by the mob. The situation was now critical and several members of the royal household had to be sent abroad for their own safety. The Prime Minister, baron de Breteuil, had to escape to Germany. Marie-Thérèse's youngest uncle, Charles d'Artois was sent abroad on her father's orders and even her governess had to escape to Switzerland in case she was targeted by an assassin. The new royal governess was the devoutly Catholic, Louise-Élisabeth, Marquise de Tourzel, whose daughter Pauline became the princess's life-long friend.
In October, Versailles was besieged and the royal family was forced to move to Paris. They were placed in the Tuileries Palace, under virtual house arrest. From that point on, Marie-Thérèse's childhood was effectively over. Marie-Thérèse wanted to show her love to her mother but found it difficult. Unlike Marie-Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse was very emotionally reserved and could not express her emotions easily.
[edit] The orphan in the Temple: imprisonment and revolution
As the political situation deteriorated, the King and Queen came to the decision that their lives were in danger. The Queen was also convinced that France's future best interests lay in the Royal Family escaping Paris. They hoped to make it to the eastern city of Montmédy, which was a royalist stronghold. Their attempted 200 mile midnight flight was intercepted in Varennes by a former servant (who felt he had been mistreated by Louis XVI) when Louis insisted on stopping to eat; they were arrested and dragged back to Paris.
In autumn 1792, the entire family was imprisoned in the Temple Fortress after the monarchy was abolished. In January 1793, Marie-Thérèse's beloved father, Louis XVI, was sent to the guillotine. Father and daughter had always been very close, and his death devastated the surviving family. Louis XVI did not have a fair trial---the Mountain had convicted him before any trial without any evidence and had already sentenced him to death even before the actual trial. Louis XVI was convicted of counter revolutionary measures and other charges, some of which were true. His death warrant was signed by David, the noted painter, Danton and Robespiere as was Marie-Antoinette, whose execution threw France into a full scale war with other nations. Under Revolutionary Law; one was guilty of the charges if one was accused. It was up to the accused to prove otherwise even though many went to the guillotine as their proof of innocence was ignored by the blood thirsty government of Robespierre which resulted in the guillotine deaths of more than 40-thousand people--most of whom were Aristocrats. It was not enough to execute people---their furniture was burned and in the Music World---the Harpsichord died as the result of its association with the aristocracy. Marie-Antoinette also played the Harpsichord and was a pupil of Glück.
In July, guards entered the royal family's rooms and took away Marie-Thérèse's little brother, Louis XVII. Louis XVII was taken and subjected to all sorts of abuse and molestation at the Temple by the family's jailers. Louis XVII later died supposedly of tuberculosis and malnutrition. However, this is disputed by some historians. His bones were found in the late 1990s. The three women left in the fortress were Marie-Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse and Louis XVI's youngest sister, Élisabeth. Of these only Marie-Thérèse was able to live through The Terror according to her Mémoires.
In October 1793, Marie-Antoinette was taken to the Conciergerie prison and accused of treason, incest with her son, other perversions et al. There was no evidence to support the charges but it was a foregone conclusion that she was guilty. Her execution amounted to murder with the evidence that was then available. However, letters allegedly written by Marie-Antoinette were found in the twentieth century that seemed to prove that she was guilty of treason by giving out State secrets in the War that had begun on her behalf and in the Monarch's defense. She was placed on trial and executed by Sanson, former Royal Executioner, on 16 October. In May 1794, Marie-Thérèse's Aunt Élisabeth was taken from her in the middle of the night, and executed the following day.
When she was in the tower of the temple, she was never told what happened to her family. All she knew was that her father was dead and she felt alone in the world. The following words are scratched on the wall of her room in the tower: "Marie-Thérèse is the most unhappy creature in the world. She can obtain no news of her mother; nor be reunited to her, though she has asked it a thousand times." "Live, my good mother! whom I love well, but of whom I can hear no tidings." "O my father! watch over me from heaven above, life was so cruel to her." "O my God! forgive those who have made my family die."
There are rumours that Maximilien Robespierre visited Marie-Thérèse once in prison, but they are not likely true. It was only once the Reign of Terror subsided that Marie-Thérèse was allowed to leave France. She was taken to Vienna, where her cousin ruled as Emperor Francis II.
[edit] Émigrée: life in exile
Marie-Thérèse later left Vienna and moved to Lithuania, where her father's eldest surviving brother lived as a guest of Tsar Paul I of Russia. This uncle, who had proclaimed himself King of France as Louis XVIII, was childless; he wished his niece to marry Louis-Antoine, his nephew and her cousin, who was eventual dynastic heir to the throne of France. Marie-Thérèse agreed unquestioningly, happy only to be part of a family again.
Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the eldest son of Marie-Thérèse's paternal uncle Charles, was a shy, stammering, diffident young man who was also probably impotent. He was certainly nothing like his handsome and sexually virile father, who viewed him as a crass embarrassment and tried to talk Louis XVIII out of marrying Marie-Thérèse to him. The wedding however went ahead in 1799.
The royal family later moved to England, where they settled in Buckinghamshire. Marie-Thérèse's uncle and father-in-law, Charles, spent most of his time in Edinburgh, where he had been given apartments at Holyrood House. The long years of exile ended upon the abdication of Napoleon I in 1814, when the royal family was restored to the French monarchy.
[edit] The Duchesse d'Angoulême: the restoration of the monarchy
Louis XVIII attempted to steer a middle-course between liberals and the ultra-monarchists, led by his younger brother Charles. He also attempted to suppress the many gentlemen who claimed to be Marie-Thérèse's long-lost younger brother, Louis XVII. Needless to say, these claimants caused the princess a good deal of emotional distress.
Marie-Thérèse found her return emotionally draining and she was deeply distrustful of the many Frenchmen who had supported either the republic or Napoleon Bonaparte's rule. She visited the site where her brother had died, and the field where her parents and Aunt Élisabeth were buried. The royal remains were later re-buried in the family crypt in Saint-Denis.
In March 1815 Napoleon returned to France and rapidly began to gain supporters and raised an army. Louis XVIII fled France, but Marie Therese who was in Bordeaux at the time attempted to rally the local troops. The troops agreed to defend her but not to cause a civil war with Napoleon's troops. Marie Therese stayed in Bordeaux despite Napoleon's orders for her to be arrested when his army arrived. Believing her cause was lost (and to spare Bordeaux senseless destruction) she finally agreed to flee. Her actions caused Napoleon to remark that she was the "only man in her family."
After Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, the Bourbons were restored a second time.
Tragedy struck when Charles' youngest (and favourite) son, Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry was assassinated by republican terrorists on 13 February 1820. Charles never recovered from the loss.
Louis XVIII died on 16 September 1824 and was succeeded by his younger brother as Charles X. Marie-Thérèse's husband, Louis-Antoine, was now heir to the throne and she was addressed as Madame la Dauphine. However, anti-monarchist feeling was on the rise again. Charles's ultra-monarchist sympathies alienated many members of the working and middle-class. There was an uprising in 1830 in which the Royal Family was betrayed by their cousin, Louis-Philippe who insinuated that Charles had abdicated absolutely (he had actually nominated his grandson Henri, comte de Chambord as king.) The abdication of Charles X was followed twenty minutes later by the abdication of Louis-Antoine. This deception worked and Louis-Philippe became king.
Marie-Thérèse chose to go into exile with her uncle and husband, rather than stay in Louis-Philippe's new kingdom. They sailed to Britain in 1830.
[edit] The later years: exiled again
The Royal Family lived in Edinburgh until 1833 when King Charles chose to move to Prague as a guest of the Austrian Emperor. They moved into the opulent luxury of Schloss-Hradschin. Marie-Thérèse devotedly nursed her uncle Charles through his last illness in 1836, when he died of cholera. By that time they had left Prague and moved to the estate of Count Coronini near Gorica, Slovenia. Like her deceased uncle, Marie-Thérèse remained a devout and sincere Roman Catholic.
Marie-Thérèse's husband died in 1844 and he was buried next to his father. Marie-Thérèse then moved to a mansion called Frohsdorf, just outside Vienna. She spent her days walking, reading, praying and sewing. The children of Marie-Thérèse's murdered cousin, Ferdinand, came to live with her – including the Bourbon claimant to the throne, the Comte de Chambord. In 1848 France became a republic, after Louis-Philippe's reign ended in another revolution.
She died on 19 October 1851, three days after the fifty-eighth anniversary of her mother's execution. The cause of death was pneumonia. In her will, Marie-Thérèse wrote:
- "Thank all Frenchmen who have remained attached to my family and to me, for the proofs of devotion that they have given us and for the sufferings they have endured for our sakes. I pray God to shower his blessings upon France that I have always loved, even in the time of my bitterest afflictions."
She is buried in the franciscan monastery of Kostanjevica, Slovenia, together with King Charles X, Louis XIX. and Henry V, who was the last member of the French Bourbons, as well as his wife Marie Therese Beatrice Gaetana, and a court minister of King Charles X, Louis Jean Casimir. On her gravestone, her title stated Queen Dowager of France, this because her husband was King Louis XIX for about twenty minutes.
[edit] In fiction
Marie-Thérèse has appeared in several motion picture adaptations, mainly to do with her mother's life. In 1938 she was played by Marilyn Knowlden in the lavish movie Marie-Antoinette, opposite Norma Shearer as the queen. In 1975, in the French television drama Marie-Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse was played by Anne-Laura Meury.
In 1989 she was played by Katherine Flynn in The French Revolution. Katherine's on-screen mother, Marie-Antoinette, was played by her real mother, Jane Seymour.
In 2001, Marie-Thérèse's character appeared briefly in the inaccurate costume-drama The Affair of the Necklace opposite Joely Richardson as Queen Marie-Antoinette.
Recently, Marie-Thérèse's character appeared in a Northern Irish play on the mystery of little Louis XVII. The characters of Louis XVII, Charles X and the princess's governess Louise-Élisabeth de Tourzel also appeared. The monarchist author of the play, All Those Who Suffered, explains his inspiration at http://www.royaltymonarchy.com/opinion/articles/russell.html
Marie-Thérèse's life provided inspiration for the novel Madame Royale by acclaimed author, Elena Maria Vidal. It was a sequel to Vidal's novel Trianon, which looked at Versailles before the Revolution.
More recently, author Sharon Stewart wrote a historical fiction novel based on the writings of Marie-Thérèse herself, The Journal of Madame Royale. She first entitled her book The Dark Tower, as part of it takes place in the Tower where the princess and her family were kept, but after it became part of a series called "Beneath the Crown", the title was changed to The Princess in the Tower.
[edit] Controversy
Some have speculated that the real Marie-Thérèse went into hiding around 1795, after having been raped and become pregnant in prison, or possibly having suffered a mental breakdown. These speculations offer her half-sister Ernestine Lambriquet as the imposter who died in 1851. Many of the questions here can be answered by reading Marie's Mémoires which were written and published just before her death. The Mémoires say that she married a Polish Count and not the speculations above. Marie was the only Royal to have lived through the Revolution in France. The Mémoires were popular reading during the 1860s and they went through several editions. Marie's brother Louis XVII was subjected to all sorts of indignities and was molested. His remains were finally found in the 1990s. In the meantime many imposters claimed to be him just as in the case of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. All claimants were found to be frauds.
The real Marie-Thérèse, according to the speculations, died in 1837 in Eishausen near Hildburghausen in Germany. These theories are treated with great scepticism by most historians. First of all, Ernestine Lambriquet was most likely not the princess's biological half-sister as neither Louis XVI nor Marie-Antoinette ever produced an illegitimate child. Louis's only sexual partner was his queen, and all of Marie-Antoinette's pregnancies were a result of their marriage, despite the rumors to the contrary and Louix XVI's lack of sexual prowess. Furthermore, the rumours surrounding Louis XVII were almost certainly false and there is no definite historical proof to suggest that the princess was hidden away after the Revolution. According to the Mémoires, she was not.
[edit] External links
- English language site of the franciscan Monastery in Kostanjevica Slovenia, where Marie Thérèse Charlotte is buried, together with the last French kings
- German language site speculating about the switch of Madame Royale
- [1] The Ruin of a Princess, which contains the life and letters of Madame Élisabeth, Journal of the Tower of the Temple by Cléry and Narrative of Madame Royale.
