The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France

by Charles Duke Yonge

CHAPTER III.

Feelings in Germany and France on the Subject of the Marriage.—Letter of Maria Teresa to the Dauphin—Characters of the Different Members of the Royal Family.—Difficulties which beset Marie Antoinette.—Maria Teresa's Letter of Advice.—The Comte de Mercy is sent as Embassador to France to act as the Adviser of the Dauphiness.—The Princesse de Lorraine at the State Ball.—A Great Disaster takes place at the Fire-works in Paris. —The Peasant at Fontainebleau.—Marie Antoinette pleases the King.— Description of her Personal Appearance.—Mercy's Report of the Impression she made on her First Arrival.

The marriage which was thus accomplished was regarded with unmodified pleasure by the family of the bride, and with almost equal satisfaction by the French king. In spite of the public rejoicings in both countries with which it was accompanied, it can not be said to have been equally acceptable to the majority of the people of either nation. There was still a strong anti-French party at Vienna,[1] and (a circumstance of far greater influence on the fortunes of the young couple) there was a strong anti-Austrian party in France, which was not without its supporters even in the king's palace. That the marriage should have been so earnestly desired at the imperial court is a strange instance of the extent to which political motives overpowered every other consideration in the mind of the great Empress-queen, for she was not ignorant of the real character of the French court, of the degree in which it was divided by factions, of the base and unworthy intrigues which were its sole business, and of the sagacity and address which were requisite for any one who would steer his way with safety and honor through its complicated mazes.

Judgment and prudence were not the qualities most naturally to be expected in a young princess not yet fifteen years old. The best prospect which Marie Antoinette had of surmounting the numerous and varied difficulties which beset her lay in the affection which she speedily conceived for her husband, and in the sincerity, we can hardly say warmth, with which he returned her love. Maria Teresa had bespoken his tenderness for her in a letter which she wrote to him on the day on which her daughter left Vienna, and which has often been quoted as a composition worthy of her alike as a mother and as a Christian sovereign; and as admirably calculated to impress the heart of her new son-in-law by claiming his attachment for his bride, on the ground of the pains which she had taken to make her worthy of her fortune.

"Your bride, my dear dauphin, has just left me. I do hope that she will cause your happiness. I have brought her up with the design that she should do so, because I have for some time forseen that she would share your destiny.

"I have inspired her with an eager desire to do her duty to you, with a tender attachment to your person, with a resolution to be attentive to think and do every thing which may please you. I have also been most careful to enjoin her a tender devotion toward the Master of all Sovereigns, being thoroughly persuaded that we are but badly providing for the welfare of the nations which are intrusted to us when we fail in our duty to Him who breaks sceptres and overthrows thrones according to his pleasure.

"I say, then, to you, my dear dauphin, as I say to my daughter: 'Cultivate your duties toward God. Seek to cause the happiness of the people over whom you will reign (it will be too soon, come when it may). Love the king, your grandfather; be humane like him; be always accessible to the unfortunate. If you behave in this manner, it is impossible that happiness can fail to be your lot.' My daughter will love you, I am certain, because I know her. But the more that I answer to you for her affection, and for her anxiety to please you, the more earnestly do I entreat you to vow to her the most sincere attachment.

"Farewell, my dear dauphin. May you be happy. I am bathed in tears.[2]"

The dauphin did not falsify the hopes thus expressed by the Empress-queen. But his was not the character to afford his wife either the advice or support which she needed, while, strange to say, he was the only member of the royal family to whom she could look for either. The king was not only utterly worthless and shameless, but weak and irresolute in the most ordinary matters. Even when in the flower and vigor of his age, he had never been able to summon courage to give verbal orders or reproofs to his own children,[3] but had intimated his pleasure or displeasure by letters. He had been gradually falling lower and lower, both in his own vices and in the estimation of the world; and was now, still more than when Lord Chesterfield first drew his picture,[4] both hated and despised. The dauphin's brothers, for such mere boys, were singularly selfish and unamiable; and the only female relations of her husband, his aunts, to whom, as such, it would have been natural that a young foreigner should look for friendship and advice, were not only narrow-minded, intriguing, and malicious, but were predisposed to regard her with jealousy as likely to interfere with the influence which they had hoped to exert over their nephew when he should become their sovereign.

Marie Antoinette had, therefore, difficulties and enemies to contend with from the very first commencement of her residence in France. And many even of her own virtues were unfavorable to her chances of happiness, calculated as they were to lay her at the mercy of her ill-wishers, and to deprive her of some of the defenses which might have been found in a different temperament. Full of health and spirits, she was naturally eager in the pursuit of enjoyment, and anxious to please every one, from feeling nothing but kindness toward every one; she was frank, open, and sincere; and, being perfectly guileless herself, she was, as through her whole life she continued to be, entirely unsuspicious of unfriendliness, much more of treachery in others. Her affability and condescension combined with this trustful disposition to make her too often the tool of designing and grasping courtiers, who sought to gain their own ends at her expense, and who presumed on her good-nature and inexperience to make requests which, as they well knew, should never have been made, but which they also reckoned that she would be unwilling to refuse.