Marie Antoinette

Stefan Zweig, Eden Paul, Cedar Paul

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781906548759
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Classici

Stefan Zweig based his biography of Marie Antoinette, who became the Queen of France when still a teenager, on her correspondence with both her mother and her great love the Count Axel von Fersen. Zweig analyses the chemistry of a woman's soul, from her intimate pleasures to her public suffering as a Queen under the weight of misfortune and history. Zweig describes Marie Antoinette in the king's bedroom, in the enchanted and extravagant world of the Trianon and with her children. He also gives an account of the Revolution, the Queen's resolve during the failed escape to Varennes, her imprisonment in the Conciergerie and her tragic end under the guillotine. This has been the definitive biography of Marie Antoinette since its publication, inspiring later biographers, including Antonia Fraser, and the recent film adaptation.

Chapter One

A Child Marriage

UPON 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...