PREFACE TO APPENDICES
The practice of loading every page of a modern history with references to authority is charlatan. Such footnotes (as was lamentably evident, for instance, in Anatole France’s recent work upon Joan of Arc) are usually copied from earlier authorities, and are, for the greater part, added without any conscientious reference to the original. Moreover, in dealing with a subject which has been as thoroughly written out by innumerable scholars as has the life of Marie Antoinette, there are very few new pieces of evidence which would make reference excusable.
With this in mind, I have determined to omit any note of the kind.
I had indeed in the original MS. a full series of notes rectifying the more glaring errors of the Cambridge History, but I was so continually discovering new ones that the task outran me, and I further remembered that the reader of a biography of Marie Antoinette would have but little interest in the misfortunes of official academic history. These also, therefore, with some reluctance I deleted from this book, reserving them for a special article upon the subject. All that could be challenged in the book in the way of statement of fact seems to me included in the Appendices that follow, and I am convinced that it is far preferable to leave the pages free to the reader, even at the expense of having perhaps to defend myself later against the criticism of certain points.
APPENDIX A
THE OPERATION ON LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH OF FRANCE
THE somewhat lengthy attempt to determine the exact date which changed the course of Louis XVI.’s life, to which I have been compelled in the text, would have been unnecessary had the document which proves both the operation itself and the moment of it been published.
It is certain that Maria Theresa knew in the last year of the old King’s reign the nature of the trouble.[[46]]
[46]. Maria Theresa to Mercy, 3rd January 1774.—“Je ne compte presque plus que sur l’entremise de l’empereur, qui à son arrivée à Versailles, trouvera peut-être le moyen.”
Louis XVI.’s hesitation in the matter endured through the month immediately succeeding his accession; though in the December[[47]] of that year he seems to have come very near to a decision. It is certain that the Emperor was to act with authority in the matter; and it is probable that Louis XVI.’s long and disastrous hesitation was in part occasioned by his brother-in-law’s delay and postponement of his voyage to Versailles.