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

Despite this success, there was still great pressure on Marie-Antoinette to conceive a male heir. To her delight, early in 1781 she found she was pregnant again. After the traumas of Marie-Thérèse’s very public delivery, spectators were banned from the next birth. In fact there was such deep silence in the room as the newborn emerged that the queen imagined she had again only produced a daughter. Then the king, overwhelmed with pride and delight, ‘tears streaming from his eyes’, came up to the queen and said, ‘Madam, you have fulfilled my wishes and those of France. You are the mother of a dauphin.’

A hundred and one cannon heralded the long-awaited birth of a son: Louis-Joseph. The news was greeted by wild celebrations: fireworks, festivities and fountains of wine in Paris. There was such ‘universal joy’, said Madame Campan, that complete strangers ‘stopped one another in the street and spoke without being acquainted’. A delegation of Parisian artisans and craftsmen came to Versailles with generous gifts for the young child. The king, at last showing confidence, was all smiles, remaining on the balcony a long time to savour the sight and constantly taking the opportunity to say with great pleasure, ‘my son, the Dauphin’. The royal line had an heir and the continuity of the monarchy seemed assured.

Nevertheless, for all the triumphant public displays, the monarchy was being imperceptibly undermined, sinking slowly beneath an ocean of debt. Furthermore, like his forebears, Louis XVI had found himself drawn into policies that added to the debt. He had agreed to provide secret funds to help General Washington’s army in America against Britain and soon sent troops and supplies as well. Support for the American revolution against the British was popular in France. Many wanted to retaliate for the defeats suffered in the Seven Years’ War, such as the Marquis de Lafayette, whose father had been killed by the British. Lafayette set sail for America in 1777 and was soon appointed major general, serving George Washington. His daring exploits were widely reported in France as he led his men in several victorious campaigns.

Louis XVI had found himself increasingly involved in the American war. In 1778 he recognised the American Declaration of Independence and signed a military alliance with the Americans. The eight thousand French soldiers who went to America made a significant difference to the war against England. Much to her disappointment, the queen’s favourite, Count Fersen, was one of many who volunteered to join the French expeditionary corps. However, as the fighting dragged on, the French government was forced to spend heavily to finance the military campaign against England.

A succession of finance ministers came and went, seemingly unable to get to grips with the deficit. Instead of reforming the tax system, Louis tried to solve the problem without alienating the aristocracy. Each year he was forced to borrow more to balance the budget, sinking further and further into debt. When his reforming finance minister, Turgot, tried to change this, he became so unpopular at court, especially with Marie-Antoinette, that he was dismissed.

His successor, Jacques Necker, a Swiss banker appointed in June 1777, attempted to reorganise the tax system but soon became embroiled in further borrowing at increasingly exorbitant interest rates. In 1781, in an attempt to win the confidence of creditors, he published the Compte Rendu , a highly favourable report of the state finances. His ambitious plan failed. His figures were challenged and in the ensuing furor , finding that he did not have the full support of Louis XVI, he resigned.

He was succeeded in 1783 by his rival, Charles Alexandre de Calonne. Calonne tried to tackle the problem by boosting the economy with increased state spending, especially on manufacturing. This only served to deepen the crisis and he was forced to contemplate further taxes. To add to the difficulties, a long agricultural depression gripped the country and inflation was rising. All this was exacerbated by the effects of the American war. Although the French secured a victory against England in the American War of Independence, aid to the Americans between 1776 and 1783 had added around 1.3 billion livres to the spiralling national debt. And there was another hidden cost of supporting America: the returning men, inspired by what they had seen overseas, brought back revolutionary ideas.

During the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France, writers like François Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau had set out radical new ideas in political philosophy. Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters of 1733 indicted the French system of government and were suppressed. He continued to challenge all manifestations of tyranny by the privileged few in church or state. Rousseau’s The Social Contract , published in 1762, tackled the great themes of liberty and virtue and the role of the state, creating a new sense of possibilities and opportunities. Intellectuals began to reject established systems of government; ‘reason’, they argued, had greater value than the king’s claim to a ‘divine right’, and they no longer saw the monarch’s rights and privileges as unchallengeable. Political issues became much more widely debated in the salons and academies of Paris. Why support a system that had the great mass of the populace in chains to abject poverty? Surely the people, rather than the king, should determine levels of taxation? Is a republic morally superior to a monarchy? Educated Frenchmen began to see in America’s Declaration of Independence a better model to follow. With the establishment of the American constitution there was a practical alternative to the monarchy of France.

Growing discontent with the government found a tangible focus in the popular press in the increasingly vitriolic portrayal of the queen. Although with the responsibilities of motherhood she had begun to moderate her earlier excesses and spent much time with her children, she had many enemies at court and the slanders continued unabated. In the streets of Paris, pornography, cartoons, prints and libelles poured out an endless barrage of spiteful criticism which, before long, became common truths throughout France. The production of these pamphlets was a commercial enterprise and writers fought to outdo each other in their ever more outrageous copy. The queen was portrayed as wildly frivolous and extravagant, with no care for the welfare of her people. Much was made of her seven years of childlessness and she was accused of lesbian relationships, especially with her favourites, Gabrielle de Polignac and the Superintendent of the Household, Princesse de Lamballe: ‘In order to have children, Cupid must widen Aphrodite’s door. This Antoinette knows, and she tires out more than one work lady widening that door. What talents are employed! The Superintendent works away. Laughter, games, little fingers, all her exploits proved in vain.’

Even when she fulfilled her role as mother, Marie-Antoinette was portrayed as unfaithful, turning the king of France into a ‘perfect cuckold’.

Our lascivious Queen

With Artois the debauched

Together with no trouble

Commit the sweet sin

But what of it

How could one find harm in that?

These calumnies demonising the queen became increasingly explicit and obscene. The Love Life of Charlie and Toinette, of 1779, outlines in graphic detail the ‘impotence of L— —’ whose ‘matchstick … is always limp and curled up’, and how ‘Toinette feels how sweet it is to be well and truly fucked’ by Artois. In the pamphlets and libelles , the queen’s voracious sexual appetite required more than one lover: Fersen, Artois and others were implicated. There was even a fake autobiography, A Historical Essay on the Life of Marie-Antoinette , which first appeared in the early 1780s and proved so popular it was continually updated, purporting to be her own confession as a ‘barbaric queen, adulterous wife, woman without morals, soiled with crime and debauchery, these are the titles that are my decorations’. Yet for many her worst crime was undeniable: she was Austrian. To the gutter press of Paris, in addition to all her other failings, she was invariably l’Autrichienne , stressing the second half of the word, chienne or ‘bitch’.