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 foreigners, 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’s first son, the Due 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 is not “amorously inclined,” and together they are “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 December 19, 1778, Marie-Antoinette went into labor. 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 tumultous” 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.
The 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 drafts, 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: Princesse 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.”
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, “Madame, 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 savor 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 triumphant public displays, the monarchy was being imperceptibly undermined, sinking slowing 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 Seven Years’ War, such as the Marquis de La Fayette, whose father had been killed by the British. La Fayette 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 recognized 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 in the war against England. Much to her disappointment, the queen’s favorite, 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 reorganize 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 favorable report of the state’s finances. His ambitious plan failed. His figures were challenged and in the ensuing furor, finding 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 of eighteenth-century France, writers like 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
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 their 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.
The growing discontent with the government found a tangible focus in the popular press through 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-out-rageous 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 favorites, Gabrielle de Polignac, and the superintendent of the household, the 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, she 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 demonizing the queen became increasingly explicit and obscene.
The Love Life of Charlie and Toinette,
published in 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.