Marie Antoinette (17 page)

December 3, 1770

The Dauphin came to my apartments this evening extremely upset. He had just heard that the King has banished the Duc de Choiseul. This is very bad news. The Duke was our strongest ally. This means that the du Barry forces have the edge. It is not good. Louis Auguste actually started whimpering. I thought he was going to cry. I said, “Pull yourself together, Louis Auguste. This is ridiculous behavior.” But then he said that he is fearful that they might send me away. They might after all make us divorce. I have to admit that for just a moment, I thought, “Oh, now really, would that be so bad?” I could return to the Hofburg, to Schönbrunn in the summer. I could return to an endless childhood. But then I saw poor Louis Auguste’s face and I thought, How can I be so selfish? I told him to be calm. We will see this through.

December 4, 1770

I had a very odd dream last night. It was odd yet wonderful. I had been walking alone through the corridors of Versailles. I had gone into the Hall of Mirrors, and in one of the mirrors I saw a reflection of the Gloriette, Mama’s beautiful little house at Schönbrunn. I walked up to the mirror and it was as if the glass turned soft and rather foggy and I simply walked through it. I was standing barefoot on the lawn of Schönbrunn. Titi was there and Elizabeth and Ferdinand and little Francis. They were all playing. I think perhaps they were rehearsing for a play or something that was to be given at a ball that evening. I walked up to them and said, “I’m back.” But no one seemed to hear me. They just looked through me. “I’m back. I want to play. What part can I have?” Still no one heard me. So I went up to Elizabeth and pulled on her sleeve. This time she turned and looked at me and smiled through her veil. Then something in me made me lift her veil. And Elizabeth’s face was beautiful. There was not a pockmark on it. Is that not a strange dream? But why did no one recognize me? I awoke feeling sad but at the same time happy, as if I had actually gone to Schönbrunn for a brief time.

December 8, 1770

Tonight I go for the first time to a performance and then to the gaming rooms to gamble and play cards. I shall decide if I talk to du Barry or not.

December 9, 1770

I did not speak to du Barry. Everyone was expecting me to, and I have decided that I’d rather catch people off guard and do it at my own choosing. I will do it, however.

January 1, 1771

Dear Diary: It is quite late, but yes, I have finally spoken to her. It was at a
petit bal
, or “little dance.” I knew I would speak to her tonight, so I purposefully wore no jewels. I wanted to stand in contrast to du Barry, who has jewels dripping from every part of her gown and whose hair is laced with them. Indeed, I wore my simplest gown, but it shows my height and my figure well. There were two occasions when people indeed did clear a path for me to approach du Barry, but I did not take advantage of them either time. I could see that du Barry was furious. However, shortly after the second time, just before the musicians were to begin the piece for the next round of dances, there were several people on the floor milling about. I managed to slip in right in front of du Barry. Everyone seemed startled to see me there. I looked straight at her and said, “There are a lot of people today at Versailles.”

How can I describe the expressions that fled across her face within the space of mere seconds? At first it was as if she was so shocked she did not hear the words. Then there was the realization of what had happened after all these months, and that smirk crawled onto her face. A bright hard glitter sprang up in her eyes that matched the diamonds on her throat. But then, suddenly, I saw something turn strange in that glittering light and in an instant I knew what it was. You see, du Barry knew that she had won this single battle, but what did it really mean except for a fleeting glory? Yes, I had been forced to talk to her by the King. But the King is old. He has seizures of apoplexy. He might not live that long and so this victory of du Barry’s is cheap — as cheap as she is. And as I stood there, I watched this strange light in her eyes grow dimmer and dimmer.

An eerie hush descended on the room. You see, dear diary, the light drained from the victor’s eyes and I, in turn, became a bright and shining woman. I needed no jewels. A silly girl perhaps needs jewels, but I am a girl no longer. I have learned many things in the past year — much more than how to dance and play a hand of cards. Once upon a time, do you remember, Diary, when I was trying not to let Mama fill my head with her thoughts or “invade my nature”? and then I wondered what exactly I meant by my nature? Well, now I know. And I needed no crown as I stood before du Barry, for I was resplendent in my own being. Du Barry knew this. She knew that she was the victor only of the moment and that I, Marie Antoinette, would become the Queen of the century.

Marie Antoinette did indeed become France’s most dazzling Queen as well as one of the most tragic. Four years after she arrived at the Court of Versailles, King Louis XV died on May 10, 1774. Marie Antoinette was in a room by herself when she heard a commotion and then the cries, “The King is dead! Long live the King!” The new King was her husband, Louis Auguste, King Louis XVI.

The people were joyous at the prospects of this new King and his beautiful and animated young wife. She was, of course, thrilled, for it seemed to her that her destiny had been fulfilled, and she wrote to her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, “Although God decreed that I should be born in the rank I now occupy, I cannot but marvel at the dispensation of Providence thanks to which I, the youngest of your children, have been chosen to be Queen over the finest realm in Europe.”

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI did not have children for several years. On the night of December 8, 1778, over one hundred and fifty people were crushed into Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber, held back only by the gold railing, to watch as she gave birth to her and Louis Auguste’s first child, a girl, Princess Marie Thérèse, named for her mother, the Empress. The spectators in the bedchamber behaved so terribly that what Madame Campan referred to as “the cruel etiquette” of witnessing Royal births was abolished shortly thereafter. The birth of their second child was much more peaceful, and only a handful of people were present to greet the arrival of the new Dauphin, the child everyone thought would be the next King of France.

This, however, was never to be. The tragic tale of Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste had already begun to unfold long before the births of their four children. Marie Antoinette was a good and loving mother, but she knew nothing of ruling, nor did her husband. She loved parties and extravagances. She was quickly nicknamed Madame Deficit for all the money she squandered. She became addicted to gambling. Meanwhile, the conditions for the people of France, the ordinary citizens, were growing worse and worse. There was widespread hunger and there was a terrible financial crisis, but Marie Antoinette and her husband, shut away in the lavish Court of Versailles, were blind and ignorant to these problems.

Resentment grew. The nobles of the Court wanted nothing to change. They loved their lives of extravagance, high fashion, and endless parties. Marie Antoinette never stopped spending. She loved the fine things that the extraordinary French craftsmen could make, not to mention the fashions of the
modistes
. Fashion and senseless spending reached disastrous proportions and, finally, in 1789, the French people’s anger exploded in revolution. The King and Marie Antoinette and their children were put under arrest and taken to a small palace, and eventually to a prison. By this time the Royal couple realized how wrong they had been. They desperately wanted to restore order and peace to France at any cost, but it was too late.

Soon they realized that their lives were indeed in danger. In 1791, they attempted an escape. They were captured, however. In 1792, the Austrians invaded France in an attempt to stop the revolution and restore the couple to their thrones, but they were beaten into retreat.

In August, the leaders of the revolution declared that Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste had no right to rule. Things began to slide toward their tragic end very quickly. In December, Louis Auguste was tried for crimes against the state and found guilty. He was publicly beheaded on January 21, 1793. The executioners used a new device called the guillotine, invented by a Parisian doctor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. The guillotine featured a heavy blade that fell across the victim’s neck and cut off the head.

Several months later, on the morning of October 16, a gaunt and worn woman in a ragged black dress was led from her prison cell. She was prisoner number 280, also known as the Widow Capet, a name given to her by the revolutionaries. Also known as Marie Antoinette, also as Antonia, she was loaded into a cart used for common criminals. She was then driven through jeering mobs to a scaffold where the guillotine awaited her. Marie Antoinette was composed. Her last words were to her executioner, whose foot she accidentally stepped on. “Pardon me, Monsieur, I did not mean to do it.”

A few minutes later the blade dropped and the people cheered.

The period from September 1793 to July 1794, during which Marie Antoinette was executed along with fifteen thousand other “enemies of the revolution,” was known as the Reign of Terror.

One of the most famous of the revolutionaries was a lawyer by the name of Maximillien Robespierre. After the King and Queen’s execution, the leaders of the revolution tried to spread their ideas of freedom and equality with the hopes of conquering other parts of Europe.

The commander of the French army was Napoleon Bonaparte, and in 1799 he declared himself the new ruler of France.

Marie Antoinette and Louis Auguste had four children in all. One, Sophie Beatrice, died in infancy. Their oldest son, Louis Joseph, the new Dauphin, was a sickly child and died of tuberculosis four years before his parents were executed. The two remaining children, Marie Thérèse and Louis Charles, shared their mother’s prison cell until she was taken away to be executed. Marie Thérèse was handed over to the Austrians upon her mother’s death in exchange for French prisoners of war. She eventually married her uncle’s son, the Duc d’Angoulême. Louis Charles was held prisoner for two more years after his parents’ executions and died in the same prison he had shared with his mother.

The eighteenth-century world into which Marie Antoinette was born was a dramatically changing one. It was a world that was increasingly uncomfortable with kings and queens and the old ways of ruling. Indeed, the atmosphere was laced with the new and exciting notions of liberty, equality, and independence.