The Life of Marie Antoinette

CHAPTER XV. Anglomania in Paris.-The Winter at Versailles.-Hunting.-Private Theatricals.-Death of Prince Charles of Lorraine.-Successes of the English in America.-Education of the Duc d'Angouleme.-Libelous Attacks on the Queen.-Death of the Empress.-Favor shown to some of the Swedish Nobles.-The Count de Fersen.-Necker retires from Office.-His Character.

It is curious, while the resources of the kingdom were so severely taxed to maintain the war against England, of which every succeeding dispatch from the seat of war showed more and more the imprudence, to read in Mercy's correspondence accounts of the Anglomania, which still subsisted in Paris; surpassing that which the letters of the empress describe as reigning in Vienna, though it did not show itself now in quite the same manner as a year or two before, in the aping of English vices, gambling at races, and hard drinking, but rather in a copying of the fashions of men's dress; in the introduction of top-boots; and, very wholesomely, in the adoption of a country life by many of the great nobles, in imitation of the English gentry; so that, for the first time since the coronation of Louis XIV., the great territorial lords began to spend a considerable part of the year on their estates, and no longer to think the interests and requirements of their tenants and dependents beneath their notice.

The winter of 1779 and the spring of 1780 passed very happily. If Versailles, from the reasons mentioned above, was not as crowded as in former years, it was very lively. The season was unusually mild; the hunting was scarcely ever interrupted, and Marie Antoinette, who now made it a rule to accompany her husband on every possible occasion, sometimes did not return from the hunt till the night was far advanced, and found her health much benefited by the habit of spending the greater part of even a winter's day in the open air. Her garden, too, which daily occupied more and more of her attention, as it increased in beauty, had the same tendency; and her anxiety to profit by the experience of others on one occasion inflicted a whimsical disappointment oil the free-thinkers of the court. The profligate and sentimental infidel Rousseau had died a couple of years before, and had been buried at Ermenonville, in the park of the Count de Girardin. In the course of the summer the queen drove over to Ermenonville, and the admirers of the versatile writer flattered themselves that her object was to pay a visit of homage to the shrine of their idol; but they wore greatly mortified to find that, though his tomb was pointed out to her, she took no further notice of it than such as consisted of a passing remark that it was very neat, and very prettily placed; and that what had attracted her curiosity was the English garden which the count had recently laid out at a great expense, and from which she had been led to expect that she might derive some hints for the further improvement of her own Little Trianon.

She had not yet entirely given up her desire for novelty in her amusements; and she began now to establish private theatricals at Versailles, choosing light comedies interspersed with song, and with but few characters, the male parts being filled by the Count d'Artois and some of the most distinguished officers of the household, while she herself took one of the female parts; the spectators being confined to the royal family and those nobles whose posts entitled them to immediate attendance on the king and queen. She was so anxious to perform her own part well, though she did not take any of the principal characters, but preferred to act the waiting-woman rather than the mistress, that she placed herself under the tuition of Michu, a professional actor of reputation from one of the Parisian theatres; but, though the audience was far too courtly to greet her appearance on the stage without vociferous applause, the preponderance of evidence must lead us to believe that her majesty was not a good actress.[1] And perhaps we may think that as the parts which she selected required rather an arch pertness than the grace and majesty which were more natural to her, so, also, they were not altogether in keeping with the stately dignity which queens should never wholly lay aside.

It was well, however, that she should have amusements to cheer her, for the year was destined to bring her heavy troubles before its close: losses in her own family, which would be felt with terrible heaviness by her affectionate disposition, were impending over her; while the news from America, where the English army at this time was achieving triumphs which seemed likely to have a decisive influence on the result of the war, caused her great anxiety. How great, a letter which she wrote to her mother in July affords a striking proof. In June, when she heard of the dangerous illness of her uncle, Prince Charles of Lorraine, now Governor of the Low Countries, formerly the gallant antagonist of Frederick of Prussia, she declared that "the intelligence overwhelmed her with an agitation and grief such as she had never before experienced," and she lamented with evidently deep and genuine distress the threatened extinction of the male line of the house of Lorraine. But before she wrote again, the news of Sir Henry Clinton's exploits in Carolina had arrived, and, though almost the same post informed her of the prince's death, the sorrow which that bereavement awakened in her mind was scarcely allowed, even in its first freshness, an equal share of her lamentations with the more absorbing importance of the events of the campaign beyond the Atlantic.

"MY DEAREST MOTHER,-I wrote to you the moment that I received the sad intelligence of my uncle's death; though, as the Brussels courier had already started, I fear my letter may have arrived rather late. I will not venture to say more on the subject, lest I should be reopening a sorrow for which you have so much cause to grieve.... The capture of Charleston[2] is a most disastrous event, both for the facilities it will afford the English and for the encouragement which it will give to their pride. It is perhaps still more serious because of the miserable defense made by the Americans. One can hope nothing from such bad troops."

It is curious to contrast the angry jealousy which she here betrays of our disposition and policy as a nation, with the partiality which, as we have seen, she showed for the agreeable qualities of individual Englishmen. But her uneasiness on this subject led to practical results, by inducing her to add her influence to that of a party which was discontented with the ministry; and was especially laboring to persuade the king to make a change in the War Department, and to dismiss the Prince de Montbarey, whose sole recommendation for the office of secretary of state seemed to be that he was a friend of the prime minister, and to give his place to the Count de Segur. The change was made, as any change was sure to be made in favor of which she personally exerted herself; even the partisans of M. de Maurepas himself were forced to allow that the new minister was in every respect far superior to his predecessor; and Mercy was desirous that she should procure the dismissal of Maurepas also, thinking it of great importance to her own comfort that the prime minister should be bound to her interests.

But she was far more anxious on other subjects. Nearly two years had now elapsed since the birth of the princess royal; and there was as yet no prospect of a companion to her, so that the Count d'Artois began to make arrangements for the education of his infant son, the Duc d'Angouleme, with a premature solicitude, which was evidently designed to point the child out to the nation as its future sovereign.[3] The queen was greatly annoyed; and, to add to her vexation, one of the teething illnesses to which children are subject at this time threw the little princess into convulsions, which, to a mother's anxiety, seemed even dangerous to her life; though in a day or two that apprehension passed away.

But these hopes of D'Artois and his flatterers again filled the court with intrigues. In the course of the summer she was made highly indignant by finding that news from the court, with malicious comments, were sent from Paris across the frontier to be printed at Deux-Ponts or Duesseldorf, and then circulated in Paris and in Vienna; and it was difficult to avoid connecting these libels with those who in the palace itself were manifestly building hopes on the diminution of her influence and the disparagement of her character.

But this and all other vexations were presently thrown into the shade by a great grief, the more difficult to bear because it was wholly unexpected by her-the death of her mother. In reality, Maria Teresa had been unwell for some time; but the suspicions of the serious character of her complaint, which she secretly entertained, she had never revealed to Marie Antoinette; and at last the end followed too quickly on the first appearance of danger to allow time for any preparatory warnings to be received at Versailles before the fatal intelligence arrived. On the 24th of November she was taken ill in a manner which excited the alarm of her physicians, but her family felt no apprehensions. Even on the 27th, the emperor felt so sanguine that the cough which seemed her most distressing symptom was but temporary, that it was with the greatest unwillingness that he consented to her receiving the communion, as the physicians recommended; but the next day even he was forced to acquiesce in the hopeless view which they took of their patient; and on the 29th she died, after having borne sufferings, which for the last three days had been of the most painful character, with the same heroism with which, in her earlier life, she had struggled against griefs of a different kind.

The dispatch announcing her death was brought to the king; and it is characteristic of his timid disposition that he could not nerve himself to communicate it to his wife, but suppressed all mention of it during the evening; and in the morning summoned the Abbe de Vermond, and employed him to break the news to her, reserving for himself the less painful task of approaching her with words of affectionate consolation after the first shock was over. For a time, however, she was almost overwhelmed with sorrow. She attempted to write to her brother, but after a few lines she closed the letter, declaring that her tears prevented her from seeing the paper; and those about her found that for some time she could bear no other topic of conversation than the courage, the wisdom, the greatness of her mother, and, above all, her warm affection for herself and for all her other children.[4]

With the death of the empress we lose the aid of Mercy's correspondence, which has afforded such invaluable service in the light it has thrown on the peculiarities of Marie Antoinette's position, and the gradual development of her character during the earlier years of her residence in France. We shall again obtain light from the same source of almost greater importance, when the still more terrible dangers of the Revolution rendered the queen more dependent than ever on his counsels. But for the next few years we shall be compelled to content ourselves with scantier materials than have been furnished by the empress's unceasing interest in her daughter's welfare, and the embassador's faithful and candid reports.

The death of Maria Teresa naturally closed the court of her daughter against all gayeties during the spring of 1781. Still, one of the taxes which princes pay for their grandeur is the force which, at times, they are compelled to put upon their inclinations, when they dispense with that retirement which their own feelings would render acceptable; and, after a few weeks of seclusion, a few guests began to be admitted to the royal supper-table, among whom, as a very extraordinary favor, were some Swedish nobles;[5] one of whom, the Count de Stedingk, had established a claim to the royal favor by serving, with several of his countrymen, as a volunteer in the Count d'Estaing's fleet in the West Indies. Such service was highly esteemed by both king and queen, since Louis, though he had been unwillingly dragged into the war by the ambition of the Count de Vergennes and the popular enthusiasm, naturally, when once engaged in it, took as vivid an interest in the prowess of his forces as if he had never been troubled with any misgivings as to the policy which had set them in motion; and Marie Antoinette was at all times excited to enthusiasm by any deed of valor, and, as we have seen, took an especial interest in the achievements of the navy.

The King of Sweden, the chivalrous Gustavus III., had already made the acquaintance of Louis and Marie Antoinette in a short visit which he had paid to France the year after their marriage; and the queen now wrote to him in warm praise of M. de Stedingk, and all his countrymen who had come under her notice, while the king rewarded the count's valor and the wounds which had been incurred in its exhibition by an order of knighthood,[6] and the more substantial gift of a pension. But the Swede who soon outran all his compatriots in the race for the royal favor of both king and queen was the Count Axel de Fersen, a descendant, it was believed, of one of the Scotch officers of the great Macpherson clan, who, in the stormy times of the Thirty Years' War, had sought fame and fortune under the banner of Gustavus Adolphus. The beauty of his countess was celebrated throughout both Sweden and France, and his own was but little inferior to it. If she was known as "The Rose of the North," his name was rarely mentioned without the addition of "The handsome." He was a perfect master of all noble and knightly accomplishments, and was also distinguished for a certain high-souled and romantic[7] enthusiasm, which lent a tinge to all his conversation and demeanor; and this combination won for him the marked favor of Marie Antoinette. The calumniators, whom the condition and prospects of the royal family made more busy than ever at this time, insinuated that he had touched her heart; but those who knew best the manners of life and characters of both denounced it as the vilest of libels. The count's was a loyal attachment, doing nothing but honor to him who felt it, and to the queen who inspired it; and it was marked by a permanence which distinguishes no devotion but that which is pure and noble, as he showed ten years later by the well-planned and courageous, though unsuccessful, efforts which he made for the deliverance of the queen and all her family.

That Marie Antoinette, who from early youth had shown an intuitive accuracy of judgment in her estimate of character, should, from the very first, honorably distinguish a man capable of such devotion to her service was not unnatural; but there was another circumstance in his favor, which he shared with the other foreign nobles, English and German, who in these years were well received by the queen. Their disinterestedness presented a striking contrast to the rapacity of the French. Every French noble valued the court only for what he could obtain from it. Even Madame de Polignac, whom the queen specially honored with the title of her friend, exhibited an all-grasping covetousness, of which, with all her efforts to shut her eyes to it, Marie Antoinette could not be unconscious; and her perception of the difference between her French and her foreign courtiers was marked by herself in a few words, when the Comte de la Marck, who was himself of foreign extraction, ventured once to recommend to her greater caution in her display of liking for the foreign nobles, as what might excite the jealousy of the French;[8] and she replied that "he might be right, but the foreigners were the only people who asked her for nothing."

Meanwhile, the war went on in America; the colonists themselves were making but little, if any, progress, and the French contingent were certainly reaping no honor, M. de La Fayette, the only officer who came in contact with a British force, showing no military skill or capacity, and not even much courage. But in the course of the spring France sustained a far heavier loss than even the defeat of an army could have inflicted on her, in the retirement of Necker from the ministry. As a statesman, he was certainly not entitled to any very high rank. He had neither extensive knowledge, nor large views, nor firmness; the only project of constitutional reform which he had brought forward had been but a mutilated and imperfect copy of the system devised by the original and statesman-like daring of Turgot. At a subsequent period he proved himself incapable of discerning the true character of the circumstances which surrounded him, and wholly ignorant of the feelings of the nation, and of the principles and objects of those who aspired to take a lead in its councils. But as yet his financial policy had undoubtedly been successful. He had greatly relieved the general distress, he had maintained the public credit, and he had inspired the nation with confidence in itself, and other countries also with confidence in its resources; but he had made many and powerful enemies by the retrenchments which had been a necessary part of his system. As early as the spring of 1780, Mercy had reported to the empress that both the king's brothers and the Duc d'Orleans complained that some of his measures infringed upon their established rights; that the Count d'Artois had had a very stormy discussion with Necker himself, and, when he could neither convince nor overbear him, had tried, though unsuccessfully, to enlist the queen against him. The count had since employed the controller of his own household, M. Boutourlin, to write pamphlets against him, and, in point of fact, many of the most elaborate details of a financial statement which Necker had recently published were very ill-calculated to endure a strict scrutiny; but M. Boutourlin did his work so badly that Necker had no difficulty in repelling him, and for a moment seemed the stronger for the attack that had been made upon him.

He had been so far right in his estimate of his position that he could rely on the support of the queen, who was aware that both her mother and her brother had a high opinion of his integrity; but though the king also had from time to time given his cordial sanction to his different measures, it was not in the nature of Louis to withstand repeated pressure and solicitation. Necker, too, himself unintentionally played into the hands of his enemies. He had nominally only a subordinate position in the ministry. As he was a Protestant, Louis had feared to offend the clergy by giving him a seat in the council, or the title of comptroller-general; but had conferred that post on M. Taboureau des Reaux, making Necker director of the treasury under him. The real management of the exchequer was, however, placed wholly in his hands; and, as he was one of the vainest of men, he had gradually assumed a tone of importance as if his were the paramount influence in the Government; going so far as even to open negotiations with foreign statesmen to which none of his colleagues were privy.[9] It was not strange that he was not very well satisfied with a position which seemed as if it had been contrived in order to keep him out of sight, and to deprive him of the credit belonging to his financial successes; but hitherto he had been satisfied to bide his time. Now, however, his triumph over M. Boutourlin seemed to him so to have established his supremacy as to entitle him to insist on a promotion which should be a public recognition of his position as the real minister of finance, and as entitled to a preponderating voice in all matters of general policy. He accordingly demanded admission to the council, and, on its being refused, at once resigned his office.

The consternation was universal; the general public had gradually learned to place such confidence in him that they looked on his loss as irreparable. Some even of the princes who had originally striven to prepossess the king against him either changed their minds or feared to show their disagreement with the common feeling. And Marie Antoinette, who fully shared his views as to the primary importance of finance in all questions of government, condescended to admit him to an interview; requested him, as a personal favor to herself, to recall his resignation, urging upon him that patience would surely in time procure him all that he asked; and, in her honest earnestness for the welfare of the nation, wept when he withdrew without having yielded to her solicitations. It was late in the evening and dark when he took his leave, and afterward, when he was told that he had drawn tears from her eyes by his refusal, he said that, had he seen them, he should have submitted to a wish so enforced, even at the sacrifice of his own comfort and reputation.