Marie Antoinette

Chapter One

A Child Marriage

U

PON DOZENS OF GERMAN

, Italian and Flemish battlefields, the Habsburgs and the Bourbons had engaged in deadly strife, each party hoping to make itself predominant in Europe. Now both sides were extenuated with fatigue. In the twelfth hour the longtime rivals perceived that their insatiable jealousies had served only to give free scope to the ambition of other ruling houses. The heretics of Britain were grasping at worldwide empire; the Protestant Mark of Brandenburg had become a mighty kingdom; Russia, a half-pagan land, aspired towards an immeasurably extended sphere of influence—recognising these things (too late, as ever) the monarchs and their servants the diplomats began to ask themselves whether it would not be better to keep the peace instead of renewing the ancient struggle to their own detriment and to the advantage of upstarts. Choiseul at the court of Louis XV and Kaunitz as the adviser of Maria Theresa of Austria entered into an alliance, and, in the hope that this would be more durable than a breathing space, more lasting than a truce, they decided that the friendship between the dynasties should be cemented by marriage. There had never been a scarcity of marriageable princesses in the House of Habsburg, and at this juncture, no less, there were many possible brides of various ages.

The French statesman began by trying to persuade Louis XV (grandfather though he was, and a man of more than questionable morals) to wed an Austrian princess, but His Most Christian Majesty made a quick remove from the bed of the Pompadour to that of a new favourite, the Dubarry. Nor did Emperor Joseph, recently widowed for the second time, show any disposition to couple with one of the three somewhat elderly daughters of Louis XV. The third possibility, and the most natural one, was to betroth the young Dauphin, the grandson of Louis XV, to a daughter of Maria Theresa. In 1766 matters came to a head with a serious proposal as concerned Marie Antoinette, then eleven years old. On 24th May, the Austrian ambassador in Paris wrote to the Empress: The King has spoken in such a way that Your Majesty can regard the matter as settled.

But diplomatists would not be diplomatists if they did not plume themselves on making the simplest things difficult, and on the art of procrastinating whenever important negotiations are afoot. Intrigue was rife in this court and in that. A year, two years, three years passed without any definitive arrangements having been concluded. With good reason Maria Theresa became alarmed lest her troublesome neighbour Frederick of Prussia (‘le monstre’, as she bitterly named him) would not, by his Machiavellian arts, frustrate a scheme likely to promote Austrian influence, and she therefore brought all her amiability, ardour and cunning to bear in an endeavour to make the French court fulfil what had been no more than a half-promise. With the indefatigability of a professional go-between, and patiently turning her powers of statecraft to account, she saw to it that her daughter’s virtues and beauties should become the talk of Paris. Showering gifts and courtesies upon the envoys, she hoped at length to get a ‘firm offer’ from Versailles. Empress rather than mother, more concerned about the power of the Habsburgs than about her daughter’s happiness, she turned a deaf ear to warnings that nature had not been kind to the Dauphin—that the young man was stupid and uncouth. If an archduchess is to become a queen, surely she need not expect happiness into the bargain? But the more urgently Maria Theresa demanded a sealed pledge, the more laggard seemed the crafty King of France. For three years Louis XV had been receiving portraits and reading eulogies of Marie Antoinette, and had declared himself on principle inclined to favour the proposed marriage. Yet he still hesitated to commit himself.

Meanwhile, in the rooms and the gardens of Schönbrunn, the innocent pawn with whom these important games of diplomatic chess were being played, the eleven-year, twelve-year, thirteen-year-old Toinette—short of stature, graceful, slender, unquestionably beautiful—was romping with her sisters, her brothers and her girlfriends, but she troubled little about books and education. Of a lively temperament, and clever at getting her own way, she was able to twist round her fingers the governesses and the priests who had been told to act as her instructors, so that she managed to escape, for the most part, the tedium of lessons.

Maria Theresa, busied in affairs of state and giving scant thought to the needs and capacities of her offspring, discovered one day to her great distress that the future queen of France, though now thirteen, could write neither French nor German correctly, and was lacking in the most elementary knowledge of history or the other requisites of a sound education. In respect of music, the girl was little better off, though Gluck had been her teacher. There was no time to lose. With the utmost speed and at the last hour the self-willed and idle Toinette must be transformed into a cultured lady.

Above all, in view of the destiny that awaited her, it was essential that she should become a good dancer and that she should be able to speak French with a perfect accent. Maria Theresa hastened to engage the famous dancing master Noverre, and two actors belonging to a French company then playing in the Austrian capital—the latter to give lessons in elocution. The French ambassador in Vienna having reported these developments to his chief, the prompt result was an angry protest—the princess who was to be the consort of the King must not hob-nob with strolling players! Fresh diplomatic negotiations followed upon the recognition that the education of the young woman provisionally chosen as the Dauphin’s bride was a matter of prime concern to the French court, and in the end, upon the recommendation of the Bishop of Orléans, a certain Abbé Vermond was sent to Vienna as tutor.

It is to Vermond that we are indebted for the first authentic and detailed accounts of the young Archduchess. He was charmed. She has a most graceful figure; holds herself well; and if (as may be hoped) she grows a little taller, she will have all the good qualities one could wish for in a great princess. Her character, her heart, are excellent. But the worthy abbé showed far more restraint in what he had to say about his pupil’s accomplishments. Spoilt, inattentive, high-spirited, vivacious to a fault, Marie Antoinette, though quick of apprehension, had never shown the slightest inclination to busy herself with matters of serious import. She is more intelligent than has been generally supposed. Unfortunately up to the age of twelve she has not been trained to concentrate in any way. Since she is rather lazy and extremely frivolous, she is hard to teach. During the first six weeks I inculcated the elements of literature, and found that she understood me very well when I gave her lucid explanations. Then she usually manifested a sound judgement—but I could not induce her to take the trouble to get to the bottom of a subject on her own initiative, though I felt that it was well within her power to do so. I came in the end to recognise that she would only learn so long as she was being amused.

Ten years later, twenty years later, almost all the statesmen who came in contact with Marie Antoinette complained of her reluctance to apply her thoughts, though she was equipped with an excellent understanding, and of her proneness to become bored whenever a conversation grew serious; already when she was but thirteen there had become obvious the dangers implicit in her character—that of one who had abundant capacity and very little will. At the French court, however, during the epoch when the King’s mistresses held sway, much more was thought of a woman’s deportment than of her intrinsic worth. Marie Antoinette was pretty, of suitable standing and of good character. These qualifications sufficed; so at length, in 1769, was sent the long-desired missive from Louis XV to Maria Theresa, in which the King formally demanded the young princess’s hand for his grandson, the future Louis XVI, proposing easter 1770 as the date for the marriage. The Empress was delighted. To this woman who had had to resign herself to so many sorrows there had come at last, it seemed, a ray of sunshine. The peace of her own realm, and therewith that of Europe was assured! Mounted couriers spurred forth to all the courts with the formal announcement that henceforwards a blood-brotherhood had been established between the sometime enemies, Habsburg and Bourbon. "Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube"—Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, marry; the old motto of the House of Habsburg held good once more.

The work of the diplomatists had been brought to a successful conclusion, but it now became plain that this had been no more than a fraction (and the easier fraction) of the task. To bring about an understanding between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, to reconcile Louis XV with Maria Theresa, had been child’s play in comparison with the unexpected difficulties that disclosed themselves when, in an affair so important, it was necessary to find a common platform for the ceremonial of the French and the Austrian courts. No doubt the respective chamberlains and their underlings had a whole year in which to elaborate an agenda for the marriage festivities—but what is a year, what are twelve months, when so many ticklish points of etiquette have to be thrashed out? The heir to the French throne was to wed an Austrian archduchess! What an infinity of tact was requisite to avoid disastrous blunders in numberless weighty details! What piles of ancient documents had to be studied with meticulous care! By day and by night the watch-dogs of convention at Versailles and at Schönbrunn had to cudgel their memories; by day and by night the envoys had to discuss the propriety of every possible invitation; mounted couriers must ride hell-for-leather bearing proposals and counter-proposals—for think what a catastrophe it would be (worse than half-a-dozen wars) if on this august occasion one of the ruling families were to be mortified by a breach of precedence!

Numberless learned dissertations were penned on either side of the Rhine, discussing such thorny problems as these—whose name should come first in the betrothal contract, that of the Empress of Austria or that of the King of France; which should first append his signature to the document; what presents should be given; the amount of the dowry; who should accompany the bride on her journey and who should receive her on arrival; how many knights, maids of honour, foot-soldiers, cavalrymen, ladies of the bedchamber, father-confessors, physicians, secretaries and laundresses were to constitute the train of the Archduchess from Vienna to the frontier, and how many of these functionaries were to cross the frontier in attendance upon the future queen of France all the way to Versailles. But long before the periwigged pundits had come to an agreement concerning these matters, the courtiers of both sexes were wrangling with one another as to their respective rights to form part of the procession from Austria or to welcome it on French soil. Although the masters of the ceremonies worked like galley-slaves, when a year had passed they were still at odds over questions of precedence and the right to be present at court. During the eleventh hour, for instance, the attendance of the Alsatian nobles was erased from the agenda in order to obviate the discussion of tedious problems of etiquette for whose settlement time is now lacking. Had not the date for bringing the discussions to a close been fixed by royal command, the guardians of Austrian and French ceremony would not, even to this day, have come to an agreement concerning the correct formalities of the marriage—so that there would have been no Queen Marie Antoinette, and perhaps no French Revolution!

Although the financial position alike in France and in Austria made strict economy essential, both the monarchy and the empire were resolved to celebrate the wedding with the utmost pomp and circumstance. Neither the House of Habsburg nor the House of Bourbon would allow itself to be outshone by the other. The French embassy in Vienna was too small to house the fifteen hundred guests. At top speed annexes were run up, while simultaneously an opera house was being built at Versailles for the wedding festivities. Both in the French and in the Austrian capital these were happy days for the court purveyors, the court tailors, jewellers and carriage builders. Simply to fetch the Archduchess, Louis XV ordered from Francien in Paris two travelling carriages of unprecedented splendour constructed of rare woods, coated with glass, lined with satin, lavishly adorned outside with paintings, spotted all over with crowns, and, despite these glories, beautifully light, magnificently sprung and exceptionally easy to draw along the roads. New court dresses, trimmed with costly jewels, were provided for the Dauphin and the members of the royal train; the Pitt diamond, the most famous brilliant of those days, glittered on Louis XV’s wedding hat; and Maria Theresa was determined that her daughter’s trousseau should be no less sumptuous, with an abundance of Mechlin lace, the finest linen, silk and precious stones.

At length Durfort made his appearance in Vienna as special envoy to fetch the bride, and his coming provided an attractive spectacle for the Viennese, who were passionately devoted to such displays. Eight-and-forty six-in-hands, among them the two wonderful carriages already described, were driven slowly through the flower-bestrewn streets to the Hofburg; the new uniforms and liveries of the hundred and seventeen bodyguards and lackeys had cost a hundred and seventeen thousand ducats; and the cost of the whole train was estimated at not less than three hundred and fifty thousand ducats.

Thereafter, festival followed upon festival—the official wooing; Marie Antoinette’s formal renunciation of her Austrian rights before the Holy Bible, the crucifix and lit candles; congratulations from the court and from the university; a full-dress military review; a gala performance at the theatre; a reception and ball in the Belvedere for three thousand persons; a supper for fifteen hundred guests in the Liechtenstein Palace; and at length, on 19th April, marriage by proxy in the Augustinian Church, the Archduke Ferdinand representing the Dauphin. The day was concluded by an affectionate family supper, and on 21st April came a formal farewell, with last embraces. At length, the reverential populace lining both sides of the road, Marie Antoinette, sometime Archduchess of Austria, drove away, in the chariot sent by the King of France, to fulfil her destiny.

To say farewell to her daughter had been hard for Maria Theresa. For years this weary and ageing woman (she was now well over fifty) had longed for the marriage as the crown of her desires, thinking that it would minister to the power of the House of Habsburg, and yet, at the last moment, she became filled with anxiety regarding the fate she had meted out to her daughter. When we read between the lines of her letters, when we study her life with an open mind, we cannot fail to recognise that this empress, the one great monarch of the Austrian line, had long felt the crown to be nothing but a burden. With endless labour, during interminable wars, she had defended her patchwork and artificial realm against Prussia and Turkey, against the East and the West, successfully maintaining its unity, but now, when objectively its position seemed secure, her courage flagged. She had a foreboding that the empire to which she had devoted so much energy and passion would suffer decay and disintegration in the hands of her successors. A far-sighted and almost clairvoyant stateswoman, she knew how loose were the ties that held together this chance assembly of multifarious nationalities, and that nothing but the utmost caution and reserve in conjunction with a shrewd passivity could prolong its life. But who was to continue the work which she had begun with such devoted care? Her children had been so great a disappointment to her that a Cassandra mood had developed. Not one of them displayed her own most outstanding qualities—patience, the power to plan and to persist, the capacity for renunciation and a wise faculty for moderation. It would seem that from their father Francis of Lorraine restless elements must have been introduced into their blood. One and all they were ready to throw away vast possibilities for the sake of a momentary pleasure. They were feeble folk, devoid of seriousness, lacking in faith and concerned only to achieve passing successes. Her son Joseph II, whom she had made coregent five years earlier, filled with an heir’s impatience, wooed the favour of Frederick the Great, who had persecuted and despised Maria Theresa for a lifetime. Joseph, too, was a great admirer of Voltaire, whom she, a pious Catholic, regarded as Antichrist. Archduchess Maria Amalia, whom Maria Theresa had likewise set upon a throne, by marrying her off to the Duke of Parma, hastened to scandalize Europe by her levity. In two months she had disordered the finances, disorganised the whole country and amused herself with more than one lover. Another girl, in Naples, did the Empress little credit. Not one, indeed, of her daughters showed a serious disposition or seemed endowed with moral strength. Maria Theresa had a bitter feeling that the task to which, with incomparable self-sacrifice and application, she had devoted all her personal and private life, inexorably renouncing every possibility of enjoyment, had, after all, been futile. She would gladly have retired to a nunnery. Nothing but the justified dread that her incautious son would, with his rash experiments, quickly destroy what she had built up, made her retain the sceptre of which her hand had long since wearied.

Nor was Maria Theresa, being a keen judge of character, under any illusion concerning the youngest of her brood, the spoilt darling Marie Antoinette. She knew the girl’s spirit, good nature and cordiality, cheerful sagacity, uncorrupted humaneness, but she knew no less Toinette’s defects, her immaturity, frivolousness, flightiness. Hoping even during the last hours to make a queen out of this temperamental hoyden, Maria Theresa had had Marie Antoinette to sleep in her own bedroom during the last two months before the departure. In lengthy conversations, the mother tried to prepare the daughter for the great position that awaited her. Hoping to win Heaven’s favour, she took the girl on pilgrimage to Mariazell.

These endeavours bore no fruit. As the hour of departure approached, the Empress became more and more troubled in spirit. Her heart was full of gloomy forebodings, and she did her utmost to appease the powers of evil. Giving Marie Antoinette a written list of regulations for the conduct of life, she made the poor girl swear a solemn oath to reread this memorandum carefully month by month. Over and above her official dispatch, Maria Theresa wrote a private letter to Louis XV, imploring the old man (he was sixty, and therefore seven years older than herself) to show every possible consideration for the heedless girl of fourteen. Yet the mother remained uneasy. Before Marie Antoinette could have reached Versailles, Maria Theresa sent her daughter an additional exhortation to follow the guidance of the aforesaid document. Let me recommend you, beloved daughter, to reread it on the twenty-first of every month. Be trusty in abiding by this wish of mine, this urgent request. The only thing I am afraid of is that you may sometimes be backward in saying your prayers, and in your reading, and may consequently grow negligent and slothful. Fight against these faults … Do not forget your mother who, though far away, will continue to watch over you until her last breath.

While all the world was rejoicing over the daughter’s triumph, the mother went to church and besought the Almighty to avert a disaster which she alone foresaw.

The huge cavalcade (there were three hundred and forty horses, which had to be changed at every posting station) made its way slowly through Upper Austria and across Bavaria, approaching the imperial frontier by degrees, though delayed by innumerable festivals and receptions. Meanwhile, on the island which divides the waters of the Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg, carpenters and upholsterers were at work upon a singular edifice. Here the court chamberlains of Versailles and Schönbrunn were playing their trump cards. After endless deliberations as to whether the formal reception of the bride was to take place upon Austrian or upon French territory, a cunning man among them hit upon the Solomonic expedient of choosing for this purpose one of the small uninhabited sandbanks in the Rhine, between France and Germany, and therefore in no-man’s-land. Here was to be erected a wooden pavilion for the ceremonial transference—a miracle of neutrality. There were to be two anterooms looking towards the right bank of the Rhine, through which Marie Antoinette would pass as Archduchess—and two anterooms looking towards the left bank of the Rhine, which she would traverse as Dauphiness of France after the ceremony. Between them would be the great hall in which the Archduchess would be definitively metamorphosed into the heiress to the throne of France. Costly tapestries from the archiepiscopal palace concealed the wooden planking; the University of Strasbourg lent a baldachin; and the wealthy burghers of Strasbourg were glad to have their finest articles of furniture hallowed by close contact with royalty. It need hardly be said that no one of middle-class origin was really entitled to set eyes upon the interior of this sanctum of princely splendour, but its guardians (as is usual in such cases) were open to corruption by a liberal tip, and so, a few days before Marie Antoinette’s arrival, some German students, spurred on by curiosity, made their way into the half-finished room. One of these youths, not long past his teens, a tall fellow, with an eager expression and with the stamp of genius upon his virile brow, could not feast his eyes enough on the gobelin hangings, whose themes had been taken from Raphael’s cartoons. In Strasbourg cathedral he had just had a revelation of the glories of Gothic architecture, and was ready to show no less appreciation, no less love, for classical art. Filled with enthusiasm, he was explaining to his less well-informed comrades the significance of the beauties unexpectedly revealed to him by the Italian master—but suddenly the flow of his eloquence ceased, he showed disquiet and knitted his dark eyebrows with something akin to anger. He had just realised what the design on the tapestries represented—a myth that was certainly unsuitable as setting for a wedding festival—the tale of Jason, Medea and Creusa, the crowning example of an unhappy marriage.

What, exclaimed the talented youngster, ignoring the astonishment of the bystanders, is it permissible thus unreflectingly to display before the eyes of a young queen entering upon married life this example of the most horrible wedding that perhaps ever took place? Among the French architects, decorators and upholsterers, are there none who can understand that pictures mean something, that pictures work upon the senses and the feelings, that they effect impressions, that they arouse ominous intimations? It seems to me as if a hideous spectre had been sent to greet this lady at the frontier; this lady who is, we are told, beautiful, and full of the joy of life!

His friends found it difficult to assuage his anger, and had almost to use force before they could make Goethe (for this was the student’s name) leave the wooden reception house. But when, not many hours later, the members of the marriage train, glad at heart, and engaged in cheerful conversation, entered the gaily decorated building, not one of them was aware that the prophetic eyes of a great poet had already glimpsed the black thread of doom interwoven into the brightly coloured hangings.

The handing-over of Marie Antoinette was to signify her farewell to all the persons and all the things which linked her with the House of Habsburg. The masters of the ceremonies had devised a peculiar symbol of this change of mental and material habitat. Not only had it been decreed that none of the members of her Austrian train were to accompany her across the invisible frontier line, but the sometime Archduchess was, on entering France, to have discarded every stitch of her native attire, was not to wear so much as shoes or stockings or shift that had been made by Viennese artificers. From the moment when she became Dauphiness of France, all her wrappings and trappings were to be of French origin. In the Austrian antechamber, therefore, in the presence of her Austrian followers, this girl of fourteen had to strip to the buff. Naked as on the day she was born, the still undeveloped girl disclosed her slender body in the curtained chamber. Then she was quickly redressed in a chemise of French silk, petticoats from Paris, stockings from Lyons, shoes made by the shoemaker to the French court, French lace. Nothing was she to keep that might be endeared to her by memory, not a ring, not a cross—for it would be a grave breach of etiquette were she to retain so much as a buckle, a clasp or a favourite bracelet—and from this same moment she was to part company with all the familiar faces. Can we be surprised to learn that the poor child, overwhelmed by so much ceremonial and hurled (the word is not too strong) into a foreign environment, should have burst into tears?

Yet what could she do but pull herself together? She knew that exhibitions of sentiment were unseemly at a political wedding. Her French suite was awaiting her in the other room, and she would have been ashamed to present herself before them timidly, her eyes bedewed with moisture. Count Starhemberg, the best man, took her by the hand, and, followed for the last time by her Austrian companions, for two more minutes still herself an Austrian wearing French-made clothes, she entered the hall of transition where, in great state, the Bourbon delegation awaited her. The matchmaker who represented his master Louis XV delivered a solemn address, the marriage contract was read aloud, and thereupon ensued, while all held their breath, the great ceremony. It had been rehearsed as carefully as a minuet. The table in the centre of the hall symbolized the frontier. Before it stood the Austrians; behind it, the French. The best man relinquished Marie Antoinette’s hand, which was taken by the French matchmaker, and he, with stately steps, led the trembling girl round the end of the table. As the measured minutes passed, keeping time with the advance of the members of the French suite to welcome their future queen, the Austrian nobles retired towards the door by which they had entered, so that they had quitted the hall at the very moment when Marie Antoinette had come to occupy a central position amid the members of her French court.

Soundlessly, with exemplary regard for the prescribed ritual, with ghostly magnificence, was this orgy of etiquette fulfilled, but at the last moment the terrified girl found the chill ceremonial unendurable. Instead of giving a cool and dignified response to the profound curtsy of the Comtesse de Noailles, sobbing, and with a gesture of appeal, she flung herself into the arms of her new lady-in-waiting. A touching scene, this, at the close of so much formality, though it was one which the high mandarins of the representation, whether they were French or whether they were Austrian, omitted to describe. In truth there was no place for sentiment, which is not tabulated among the logarithms of courtly procedure. The horses harnessed to the glass chariot were impatiently pawing the ground, the bells of Strasbourg cathedral were pealing, salvos of artillery were being fired, and, amid jubilations, Marie Antoinette quitted for ever and a day the carefree realm of childhood. Her destiny as a woman had begun.

The arrival of Marie Antoinette was a memorable occasion for the French people, which had not, of late years, been overindulged with public spectacles. It was decades since Strasbourg had been favoured with the sight of a future queen of France, and probably none of those who aforetime had been seen in that city had been so charming as this Austrian maiden. With blue and sparkling eyes the girl—a fair-haired and delicately built creature—smiled from the glass chariot at the huge crowd of persons who had assembled from all the towns and villages of Alsace, adorned in their provincial dress. They, in their turn, welcomed the gorgeous procession with loud acclamations. Hundreds of children clad in white strewed flowers in its path; a triumphal arch had been erected; garlands decorated the gates; wine was flowing from the city fountains; oxen were roasted whole; in huge baskets, bread was provided for free distribution to the poor. When darkness fell, the houses were illuminated; strings of lanterns serpentined up the cathedral tower; the tracery of the magnificent building shone red in the fitful glare. Boats glided hither and thither on the surface of the Rhine, bearing lampions like great red oranges attached to their masts, or showing coloured torches waved by human hands. Coloured glass balls glittered from among the trees. On the island there was a grand fireworks display, and a set piece to exhibit, amid mythological figures, the interwoven monograms of the Dauphin and the Dauphiness. Till far on into the night the populace thronged the streets of the town and the banks of the river; bands played; lads and lasses danced merrily; there was a general feeling that the arrival of the blonde girl from Austria heralded a return of the Golden Age; and once again hope surged up in the embittered hearts of the French people.

But wonderful though this welcome was, there was already a rift in the lute, another boding of disaster in addition to the symbolic menace of the tapestry in the hall of reception. When next day, before proceeding on her journey westwards, Marie Antoinette wished to hear mass, she was greeted at the great doors of the cathedral, not by the venerable bishop, but by his nephew and coadjutor at the head of the diocesan clergy. Looking somewhat feminine in his flowing purple vestments, the young priest (who was man of the world more than priest) delivered a gallant and affecting speech which wound up with the courtly phrases: You will be for us the living image of the beloved Empress whom Europe has so long admired and whom posterity will continue to venerate. The spirit of Maria Theresa is about to unite with the spirit of the Bourbons. After listening attentively to this greeting, the train entered the comparative darkness of the lofty building. The priest led the girl princess to the altar, and there, with his finely shaped, bejewelled hand, lifted the monstrance for the benediction. He was Louis Prince de Rohan, in later days the tragi-comic hero of the affair of the diamond necklace. The hand which here in Strasbourg invoked God’s blessing on her head was the very hand which, long years afterwards, was to help in bespattering her crown with mire and in bringing her name into contempt.

Marie Antoinette could not linger in Alsace, although this semi-German French province had a home-like atmosphere. The King of France must not be kept waiting! Through many more triumphal arches and begarlanded gates, the bridal train wound its way towards the place of meeting, the forest of Compiègne, where, with a great park of carriages, the royal family was assembled to welcome this new member. Courtiers and court ladies, the officers of the King’s guard, drummers, trumpeters and buglers, spick-and-span in new clothes, stood in motley array. Under the May sunshine, the woods were bright with the play of colour. As soon as a fanfare from the respective trains had announced the near approach of the procession, Louis XV got out of his chariot to receive his grandson’s bride. But Marie Antoinette was beforehand with him. Light of foot (this was one of her chief graces) she hastened up to him and, schooled by Noverre, curtsied in due form to her new grandfather. The King, whose experiences in the Parc aux Cerfs had made him a connoisseur in the matter of girlish charms, and who was still susceptible, leant forwards with a tender content over this appetizing creature, helped her to rise and kissed her on both cheeks. Not until after this did he introduce her future spouse, who, a lanky fellow five feet ten inches tall, was looking on with clumsy embarrassment. Now, contemplating the new arrival with his sleepy, short-sighted eyes, and without showing any particular zest, he kissed her on the cheeks formally, as etiquette demanded. A moment later, Marie Antoinette was seated in the chariot between grandfather and grandson, between Louis XV and the future Louis XVI. The old man seemed more inclined than the young one to play the role of bridegroom, chattering in sprightly fashion, and even paying court to the girl, while the husband-to-be leant back in his corner, bored and tongue-tied. When the pair, who were not only betrothed but were already wedded per procurationem, retired for the night and went to sleep in separate rooms, this sorry lover had not yet spoken a single affectionate word to the fascinating flapper. In his diary, as summary of what had happened on so decisive a day, he penned the curt entry: "Entrevue avec Madame la Dauphine."

Six-and-thirty years later, in this same forest of Compiègne, another ruler of France, Napoleon, waited for another Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who had come to marry him. She was not so pretty, not so luscious a morsel as Marie Antoinette, the buxom and rather tedious though gentle Marie Louise. But Napoleon was no laggard in love, and hastened, at once tenderly and stormily, to take possession of his bride. On the evening of her arrival he asked the bishop whether the marriage by proxy in Vienna gave him full conjugal rights. Then, without waiting for an answer, he drew his own conclusions, so that next morning the pair had breakfast in bed together. But the husband who came to meet Marie Antoinette in the forest of Compiègne was neither a lover nor a man. He was only an official bridegroom.

The second wedding festival, the real one in succession to the proxy affair in Vienna, took place on 16th May 1770, at Versailles in the Chapel of Louis XIV. A court affair, a state affair, under the aegis of the Most Christian King, it was too private and too sublime and too sovereign for common folk to be allowed to catch a glimpse of it, even as a crowd waiting outside the doors. Only nobles of high descent, only those whose coats of arms bore many quarterings, could be granted access to the consecrated building, where, as the spring sunshine pierced the stained-glass windows, embroidered brocades, shimmering silks, all the glories of those set apart by privilege and wealth, flaunted themselves once more like the last beacon of an expiring world. The Archbishop of Rheims consecrated the marriage. He blessed the thirteen gold pieces and the wedding ring. Thereafter, the Dauphin put the ring on the fourth finger of Marie Antoinette’s left hand, and gave her the gold pieces. Then the wedded pair knelt down to receive the prelate’s blessing. The strains of the organ preluded the nuptial mass. While the paternoster was being said, a silver canopy was held over the heads of the young couple. As soon as the religious ceremony was finished, the King and in due order of precedence his blood relations signed the marriage contract. It was an interminable document, a parchment on whose faded legend the curious can still decipher the badly penned signature Marie Antoinette Josepha Jeanne, laboriously inscribed by the bride of fifteen. Beside the signature is a big blot of ink, the Dauphiness alone, among all the signatories, having botched her inscription in this ominous way. We may guess that there were whisperings among the bystanders!

Now, when the ceremony was over, the people were graciously allowed to participate in the rejoicings at the monarchical festival. Huge crowds (Paris was half depopulated for the nonce) thronged the gardens at Versailles—whose fountains and waterfalls, whose alleys and lawns and flower beds are today freely opened to the profanum vulgus. The titbit of the show had been reserved for the evening, a display of fireworks which was to be the greatest ever seen at a royal court. But in such matters man proposes and the heavens dispose. In the course of the afternoon threatening clouds gathered, and at length the storm burst. Rain fell in torrents, and the populace, robbed of its spectacle, hastened back to Paris in wild disorder. Tens of thousands of the canaille, shivering with cold and drenched to the skin, hurried homewards through the streets; the trees in the park, likewise drenched, were bending before the blast—while behind the windows of the newly built "salle de spectacle", blazing with thousands of candles, began the great wedding feast, with which neither hurricanes nor earthquakes could be allowed to interfere. For the first and the last time, Louis XV was trying to outshine the magnificence of his immediate predecessor, the Grand Monarque.

Six thousand from among the blue-blooded of France had managed to secure cards of entry; not, indeed, to join in the banquet, but merely that they might look on reverently from the gallery while the two-and-twenty members of the royal house were busily plying knife, fork and spoon. The spectators scarcely dared draw breath, lest they should disturb the sublimity of the moment, so that, apart from the noise that came from the supper table, the only sounds were those made by an orchestra of eighty instrumentalists whose music—subdued to the solemnity of the occasion—re-echoed from among the marble pillars. Then, while the officers and men of the guard stood to attention, the royal family marched out between the bowing nobles, ranged in rows on either side. The festival was over, and it only remained for the husband who was destined to become King of France to fulfil what is the duty of every Tom, Dick and Harry on the wedding night. With the Dauphiness on the right and the Dauphin on the left, His Majesty conducted the wedded children, whose joint ages barely exceeded thirty years, to their sleeping apartment. Even in the bridal chamber etiquette must be maintained, for who but the King of France in person could hand the heir to the throne his nightgown, and who could perform a like service for the Dauphiness other than the most recently married lady of semi-royal rank; in this instance, the Duchess of Chartres? But even these distinguished assistants must not approach the nuptial couch. Apart from those who were to sleep in it, none could do that but the Archbishop of Rheims, who blessed it and sprinkled it with holy water.

At length the court left the youthful husband and wife to their privacy. Louis and Marie Antoinette were alone together for the first time since they had been married, and the rustling curtains of the great four-poster closed around an unseen tragedy.

Chapter Two

Secret of the Alcove

W

HAT FIRST HAPPENED

in the great four-poster was—nothing! It was with a disastrous double meaning that the young husband wrote next morning in his diary: "Rien." Neither the court ceremony nor yet the archiepiscopal consecration of the nuptial couch had sufficed to overcome the Dauphin’s constitutional infirmity. Matrimonium non consummatum est; as far as its essential physical purpose was concerned, the marriage remained unfulfilled, today, tomorrow, for several years. Marie Antoinette had been coupled with a "nonchalant mari, with a negligent husband, and at first the general belief was that nothing but timidity, inexperience or a nature tardive" (today we should speak of ‘infantilism’) had made the youth of sixteen impotent when put to bed with so fascinating a maiden.

Toinette must not be in too great a hurry, for that, by increasing her husband’s uneasiness, will only make matters worse, thought the mother, who was a woman of experience. Writing to her daughter in May 1771, she said that the latter must not take the disappointment too hardly, must not be peevish, "point d’humeur là-dessus; recommended tenderness and caresses, caresses, cajoleries; yet even in this respect there must be moderation. If you show yourself impatient, you may spoil the whole thing."

But when this distressing state of affairs had lasted a year, two years, the Empress began to grow anxious about the "conduite si ètrange of the young man. There could be no question as to his goodwill, for from month to month the Dauphin showed himself more and more affectionate towards his charming wife. His nocturnal visits were incessantly repeated, but always in vain, for some maudit charme, some disastrous spell, always prevented a decisive finale to his embraces. Little Marie Antoinette, being ill informed about such matters, fancied that the only trouble was maladresse et jeunesse, clumsiness and youth. Trying to make the best of a bad job, during the last days of 1771 she actually wrote to her mother denying the false reports which are current here as to his impotence".

Maria Theresa, however, refused to be hoodwinked, and was determined to seek better information. Sending for van Swieten, her physician-in-ordinary, she begged his advice concerning the "froideur extraordinaire du Dauphin"—extraordinary coldness of the Dauphin—and asked him whether anything could be done about it. The doctor shrugged his shoulders. If a girl with so many attractions could not liven up the Dauphin, he did not think that drugs would be of any avail!

Maria Theresa wrote letter after letter to Paris. Finally King Louis XV, whose experience in this domain had been multifarious to excess, took his grandson to task. Lassone, physician to the French court, was summoned; young Louis was subjected to physical examination; and at length it became plain that the Dauphin’s sexual impotence was not what we should now term ‘psychogenic’, but was due to a trifling organic defect—to phimosis. Details are given in a secret report sent from Paris to Madrid by the Spanish ambassador. It runs as follows: "Quién dice que el frenillo sujeta tanto el prepucio que no cede a la introducción y causa un dolor vivo en él, por el qual se retrahe S.M. del impulso que convinierá. Quién supone que el dicho prepucio está tan cerrado que no puede explayarse para la dilatación de la punta o cabeza de la parte, en virtud de lo que no llega la erección al punto de elasticidad necessaria."

Consultation followed upon consultation, as to whether the surgeons should intervene with the bistoury, "pour lui rendre la voix—to give him his voice back—as the cynical whisper ran in the anterooms. Marie Antoinette, who had meanwhile been fully informed about these things by experienced lady friends, did her utmost to persuade her husband to submit to surgical intervention. (Je travaille à le déterminer à la petite opération, dont on a déjà parlé et que je crois nécessaire"—I’m working on getting him round to the small operation, of which we’ve already spoken, and which I believe is necessary—she wrote to her mother in 1775.) But though five years had elapsed since his marriage, Louis XVI—as he had now become—was not yet an effective husband, and, being a young man of vacillating character, he found it impossible to make up his mind to so energetic a course. He hesitated, procrastinated, tried one futile measure after another, until the situation of the married pair, at once ludicrous and horrible, grew shameful to the Queen, was the scorn of the whole court, enraged Maria Theresa and hopelessly humiliated the new King. Thus matters dragged on for another two years, making in all seven years of frustration. Then Emperor Joseph undertook the journey to Paris that he might inspire his rather pusillanimous brother-in-law with sufficient courage for the operation. The needful was done, and our pitiful Cásar was enabled to cross his Rubicon. But as far as his wife’s mental realm was concerned, that of which he now achieved the conquest had been hopelessly laid waste by these seven years of a preposterous struggle, by the two thousand nights during which Marie Antoinette, as woman and as wife, had suffered the most disastrous mortification that can befall one of her sex.

I doubt not that many of the more sensitive among my readers will be outraged at my having touched upon this thorny and most sacred mystery of the alcove. Surely the matter could have been avoided! they will exclaim. Would it not have sufficed to refer to the monarch’s ineffectiveness in the marriage bed in such veiled terms as to be practically incomprehensible, to evade discussion of the tragedy by leaving it wrapped in mystery, or at least to rest content with speaking in flowery and unintelligible metaphors of the ‘lack of maternal joys’? Is it really essential to the study of a character that the author should emphasize such exceedingly private details?—Certainly it is indispensable, for the multitudinous tensions, clashes and interlockings, subserviences and hostilities, which gradually developed between the King and the Queen, Louis’s two brothers and the court generally, with repercussions extending far and wide into the field of history, would remain incomprehensible if no frank explanation were given as to their true causes. More numerous and more momentous historical consequences than people are in general willing to admit have taken their rise in alcoves and behind the curtains of royal beds, but scarcely in any other instance is the logical sequence between an extremely private cause and a worldwide politico-historical effect so plain as in this tragicomedy which concerned the conjugal relationships of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Utterly insincere would be any description which should leave hidden away in the shadows what Marie Antoinette herself spoke of as the "article essentiel"—essential article—the focus of her sorrows and expectations.

Besides, is it really a secret that I am disclosing when I speak frankly and straightforwardly about Louis XVI’s impotence during the first seven years of his married life? By no means! Only the nineteenth century, with its morbid prudery, has made a noli-me-tangere of the unrestrained exposition of physiological facts. Throughout the eighteenth century, as in all previous ages, a king’s competence or impotence, and a queen’s fertility or barrenness, were regarded as public and not as private affairs, were looked upon as matters of state, because upon them depended the ‘succession’, and therewith the fate of the whole country. The marriage bed was as obviously a part of human life as the font or the coffin. In the correspondence between Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette, though all the letters passed through the hands of the official keeper of the archives and of the copyists, the Empress of Austria and the Queen of France wrote in the plainest terms about the details and the misadventures of this affair. Maria Theresa dwelt upon the advantages of husband and wife sleeping together as a rule, and gave her daughter plain hints as to the best way of turning to account any chance of intimate relations. The daughter, in her turn, never failed to report the arrival or non-arrival of the monthly periods, to describe her husband’s repeated failures with a special mention any time when things went "un petit mieux"—a little better—and finally—triumphantly—to announce a pregnancy. On one occasion the famous Gluck, the composer of Iphigénie, was entrusted with the carrying of such private news because he was leaving a day or two ahead of the courier. In the eighteenth century natural things were still regarded with naturalness.

Nor was it Toinette’s mother alone who was well informed about the husband’s impotence. All the ladies of the bedchamber, the other court ladies no less, knights and military officers, were continually talking about it. The body servants were no less well informed, ‘in the know’, and so were the washerwomen at the court of Versailles. Even at his own table the King had to put up with many a rough witticism on the subject. Furthermore, since the impotence of a Bourbon monarch was a matter of such outstanding political importance, at foreign courts a keen interest was taken in the problem that pressed so urgently at the court of France. The reports of the Prussian, the Saxon, the Sardinian envoys are full of accounts of this ticklish problem. The most zealous among these diplomatists, Count Aranda, the Spanish ambassador, actually bribed some of the palace servants to bring him news as to the condition of the linen in the royal bed, wishing to perfect his physiological knowledge as to the actual state of affairs. All over Europe princes and kings, by letters and by word of mouth, were making fun of their maladroit colleague. Not only in Versailles, but in the streets of Paris and the whole land of France, the King’s conjugal inefficiency was an open secret. People talked of it at the street corners. It found its way into print, lampoons on the topic being passed furtively from hand to hand. When Maurepas was made first minister, the general hilarity was stimulated by the circulation of the following cheerful versicles:

Maurepas était impuissant,

Le Roi l’a rendu plus puissant.

Le Ministre reconnaissant

Dit: Pour vous, Sire,

Ce que je désire,

D’en faire autant.

(Maurepas was powerless, and the King made him more powerful. The grateful minister said: for you, sir, what I desire is to do the same for you.) But what may sound amusing to us of a later generation had a momentous, nay perilous significance. During these seven years of impotence, the characters of the King and the Queen were warped, each in its own fashion—with political results which would be unintelligible had we no knowledge of the prime cause. The fate of this one marriage was intertwined with the fate of the world.

Incomprehensible, above all, would be Louis XVI’s mentality if we knew nothing about this private trouble, for his character displays the typical clinical traits of an inferiority complex determined by a sense of defective virility. Because he had been impotent in the privacy of the conjugal bed, he became affected with inhibitions which robbed him in public life of the energy needed for creative activity. He was unable ‘to take the floor’, incapable of exercising his own will and even more incapable of getting his own way on the rare occasions when his will stirred. Suffering from a sense of secret shame, awkward and shy, he did his utmost to avoid social functions, and was especially loath to associate with women. Though a good enough fellow, fundamentally eager to do the right thing, he was aware that everyone at court knew about his misadventures, so that he shrank into himself, wincing at the ironical smiles of the initiated. Occasionally, he tried to assume airs of authority, and to put on a semblance of manliness. Invariably, on these occasions, he overacted his part, becoming rough and brutal in his demeanour—such assumed roughness being unconvincing, a typical manifestation of the flight from reality. Never did he succeed in showing a natural self-confidence, least of all in his hereditary role of king. Because he had been unable to play the man in his sleeping apartment, he could not play the monarch in public.

Many of his personal tastes were ultra-virile; he was fond of outdoor sports and of hard physical toil; he learnt the locksmith’s craft, and the lathe he used in his workshop is still on show. But these circumstances, far from conflicting with the clinical picture just given, serve only to confirm it. He who is not really in all respects a man has an unconscious longing to fulfil a ‘heman’s’ part, seeking compensation for his hidden weakness in an exaggerated display of strength. By keeping the saddle for hours, hunting the boar and wearying one horse after another, by tiring out his muscles when wielding the hammer in his smithy, he found compensation in these proofs of his bodily strength, and could for a moment forget the fatal defect. It was agreeable to him to toil like Hephaestus, who, a titan at the forge, was a laggard in the service of Aphrodite. No sooner, however, did Louis throw aside his hunting costume or his workshop overall in order to put on full dress and strut among his courtiers, than he felt that something more than mere muscular strength was requisite to virility, and his embarrassment returned in full tide. Rarely was he seen to laugh, seldom did he look happy.

From the characterological outlook, the most disastrous consequences of this sense of weakness became apparent in his mental attitude towards his wife. There was a good deal in her behaviour which was repugnant to his taste. He disliked her unceasing round of social amusements, her perpetual noisy pleasure-seeking, her extravagance in money matters, her levity. A man able to play a man’s part would speedily have asserted himself, and would have made his young wife conduct herself in accordance with his wishes. But how could he, who, night after night, was shamed and made ridiculous by his inefficiency as a spouse, assert himself as master in the daytime? Because of his sexual impotence, Louis XVI could make no headway against his wife. The longer this unhappy state of affairs lasted, the more did he fall into dependence, nay servitude. He gave her whatever she wanted, without demur, thus again and again by his complaisance ransoming himself from his sense of culpability. In the last analysis, will-power is but the mental expression of physical potency, and, lacking both, Louis had no aptitude for imposing the necessary restraint upon his wife’s follies. It was the despair of the ministers of state, of Maria Theresa, of the whole court, to watch how the royal power was passing into the hands of a young and giddy-pated woman, and to note the inconsiderate way in which she was squandering her opportunities. Why, it may be asked, did not things improve after a trifling operation had made Louis a competent husband? The answer is simple. Too late! How familiar is the experience that the parallelogram of forces which becomes established during the early years of married life continues to function indefinitely, thanks to the mental relationships thus brought into being. Even when Louis XVI had been for some time seated on his throne, when he had become a husband in the full sense of the word and had procreated several children, he, who should have been the ruler of France, remained the thrall of Marie Antoinette, simply because to begin with he had been an ineffective husband.

The sexual impotence of Louis XVI had results that were no less sinister as regards the mental development of Marie Antoinette. Owing to the contrast between the sexes, one and the same disturbance has opposite results upon the masculine and the feminine nature. When a man is affected with sexual incapacity, he suffers from inhibitions and from irresolution. But when, in the female partner, her readiness to surrender herself to the male does not find its due fulfilment, the inevitable upshot will be irritability and lack of restraint with outbursts of excessive liveliness. By nature, Marie Antoinette was normal enough—a tender, womanly woman, foreordained to motherhood on the old, liberal scale, and only waiting, one may suppose,