Deborah Cadbury - The Lost King of France - The Tragic Story of Marie-Antoinette's Favourite Son

Gambling soon became another irresistible occupation for the young queen, who managed to accumulate heavy debts, which her husband settled from his private income. Constantly frugal himself, Louis failed to impose this self-discipline on his young wife. Worse criticism was to come when she began to ring up bills for diamonds, followed by more diamonds, in increasing size and quantity, until her mother wrote in some distraction: ‘a Queen can only degrade herself by such impossible behaviour and degrades herself even more by this sort of heedless extravagance, especially in difficult times … I hope I shall not live to see the disaster which is all too likely to occur.’ Marie-Antoinette replied, ‘I would not have thought anyone could have bothered you about such bagatelles.’

Inevitably all this played into the hands of the rumour-mongers. Malicious gossip soon spread about how much money the queen was spending. Apart from jewels and clothes – around 170 creations a year – not to mention her famous hairdresser, Léonard Hautier, who came out from Paris each day to create a powdered, coiffured fantasy up to three feet high, she also lavished money on the Petit Trianon. This was an elegant neoclassical pavilion about a mile from Versailles given to her by the king, which she refurbished to her own taste, including the creation of an English-style garden. This little private heaven was a place where Marie-Antoinette could escape the suffocating etiquette of court and enjoy being informal with her friends; but of course, the money poured into the Petit Trianon, together with enormous sums spent on generously favouring her friends, created jealousy and hostility amongst those who were not so favoured. Courtiers frustrated not to be part of her inner circle maliciously called the Petit Trianon ‘Little Vienna’.

Marie-Antoinette’s Austrian blood still rankled with many in France. All too many nobles had had relatives killed by Austrians in recent wars or at least had fought against Austrian troops. The queen’s apparent contempt for French customs soon made her enemies among the nobility. ‘Apart from a few favourites … everyone was excluded from the royal presence,’ complained one nobleman, the Duc de Lévis-Mirepoix. ‘Rank, service, reputation, and birth were no longer enough to gain admittance.’ Some nobles, he said, stayed away from Versailles rather than endure snubs from such a young, apparently light-headed and frivolous foreigner.

Yet she was not without admirers; she particularly cultivated the good-looking and fashionable men, such as the king’s youngest brother, Artois. With his cosmopolitan air and ease with women, he was only too happy to oblige the king and escort the queen to countless social events. On one occasion, in January 1774, at a masquerade at the opera in Paris, through her grey velvet mask Marie-Antoinette found herself talking to a tall, attractive man with a somewhat serious expression. He was finishing a European grand tour and, as he talked, she realised he had a delightful Swedish accent. Always drawn to a foreigner, she became interested in this aristocratic stranger who was so at ease in Parisian high society. The glamorous Count Axel Fersen made an instant impression.

Not surprisingly, her relationship with her husband was under strain. Anxious about his new role as king, he seemed intimidated by this sophisticated and beautiful wife whom he could not satisfy. ‘The king fears her, rather than loves her,’ observed one courtier, who noticed the king seemed much happier and more relaxed when she was absent. Marie-Antoinette, in turn, chose the company of young men full of energy and wit who would flatter and amuse her; she found it difficult to be patient with such a dull and unexciting husband. Yet they both wanted the marriage to succeed and, in particular, they both wanted an heir.

However, as the years passed, no heir was produced, which incited much malicious gossip. In the autumn of 1775, five years into the marriage, Parisian women were heard shouting revolting obscenities at Marie-Antoinette at a race meeting, mocking her for not giving birth to a dauphin. In the same year she wrote to her mother to tell her about the birth of Artois’ first son, the Duc d’Angoulême, now third in line to the throne. ‘There’s no need to tell you, dear Mama, how much it hurts me to see an heir to the throne who isn’t mine.’ Despite this pressure, Louis remained, to say the least, rather uninterested in sex. The best doctors were consulted and various diagnoses were made, although no serious impediment to the match was found. Marie-Antoinette told her mother that she tried to entice her husband to spend more time with her, and reported enthusiastically early in 1776 that ‘his body seemed to be becoming firmer’.

The empress, however, required much more than this to seal the all-important political alliance. The following year, in April 1777, Marie-Antoinette’s brother, now the Emperor Joseph, came to visit Versailles, charged, amongst other things, with trying to ascertain why no heir was forthcoming. Joseph was enchanted with his sister, whom he described as ‘delightful … a little young and inclined to be rash, but with a core of honesty and virtue that deserves respect’. It would appear from Joseph’s private letters afterwards to his brother Leopold of Tuscany that during his six-week stay he did not shrink from probing the intimate details of their marriage: ‘In the conjugal bed, here is the secret. He [Louis] has excellent erections, inserts his organ, remains there without stirring for perhaps two minutes, and then withdraws without ever discharging and, still erect, he bids his wife goodnight. It is incomprehensible.’ Joseph continued, ‘he ought to be whipped, to make him ejaculate, as one whips donkeys!’ As for Marie-Antoinette, he wrote that she was not ‘amorously inclined’, and together they were ‘a couple of awkward duffers!’

Joseph reproved his sister for not showing her husband more affection. ‘Aren’t you cold and disinterested when he caresses you or tries to speak to you?’ he challenged her. ‘Don’t you look bored, even disgusted? If it’s true, then how can you possibly expect such a cold-blooded man to make love to you?’ Marie-Antoinette evidently took his advice to heart. That summer she was elated to tell her mother that at last she had experienced ‘the happiness so essential for my entire life’. The king and queen’s sexual awakening brought them closer together and, early the following year, she reported that ‘the king spends three or four nights a week in my bed and behaves in a way that fills me with hope’. Some weeks later Marie-Antoinette proudly announced to her husband that she was at last expecting a baby. Louis was overjoyed.

On 19 December 1778 Marie-Antoinette went into labour. At Versailles a royal birth, like eating or dressing, was a public ritual, open to spectators who wished to satisfy themselves that the new baby was born to the queen. As the bells rang out, ‘torrents of inquisitive persons poured into the chamber’, wrote Madame Campan. The rush was ‘so great and tumultuous’ that it was impossible to move; some courtiers were even standing on the furniture. ‘So motley a gathering,’ protested the First Lady of the Bedchamber, ‘one would have thought oneself in a place of public amusement!’ Finally, when the baby was born, there was no sound, and Marie-Antoinette began to panic, thinking it was stillborn. At the first cry, the queen was so elated and exhausted by the effort that she was quite overcome. ‘Help me, I’m dying,’ she cried as she turned very pale and lost consciousness.

Princesse de Lamballe, horrified by the agony of her friend, also collapsed and was taken out ‘insensible’. The windows, which had been sealed to keep out draughts, were hurriedly broken to get more air, courtiers were thrown out, the queen was bled, hot water fetched. It took some time for the queen to regain consciousness. At this point ‘we were all embracing each other and shedding tears of joy’, writes Madame Campan, caught up in ‘transports of delight’ that the queen ‘was restored to life’. A twenty-one-gun salute rang out to announce the birth of a daughter: Princess Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte or Madame Royale. ‘Poor little girl,’ the queen is reported to have said as she cradled her daughter. ‘You are not what was desired, but you are no less dear to me on that account. A son would have been the property of the state. You shall be mine.’