Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France Part 31

Warsaw was for a brief time the resting-place of the wanderers, but there they were disturbed in 1803 by Napoleon's attempt to threaten and bribe Louis XVIII. into abdication. It was suggested that refusal might bring upon them expulsion from Prussia. "We are accustomed to suffering," was the King's answer, "and we do not dread poverty. I would, trusting in G.o.d, seek another asylum." In 1808, after many changes of scene, this asylum was sought in England, Gosfield Hall, Ess.e.x, being placed at their disposal by the Marquis of Buckingham. From Gosfield, the King moved to Hartwell Hall, a fine old Elizabethan mansion rented from Sir George Lee for L 500 a year. A yearly grant of L 24,000 was made to the exiled family by the British Government, out of which a hundred and forty persons were supported, the royal dinner-party generally numbering two dozen.

At Hartwell, as in her other homes, the d.u.c.h.ess was most popular amongst the poor. In general society she was cold and reserved, and she disliked the notice of strangers. In March, 1814, the royalist successes at Bordeaux paved the way for the restoration of royalty in France, and amidst general sympathy and congratulation, with the Prince Regent himself to wish them good fortune, the King, the d.u.c.h.ess, and their suite left Hartwell in April, 1814. The return to France was as triumphant as a somewhat half-hearted and doubtful enthusiasm could make it, and most of such cordiality as there was fell to the share of the d.u.c.h.ess. As she pa.s.sed to Notre-Dame in May, 1814, on entering Paris, she was vociferously greeted. The feeling of loyalty, however, was not much longer-lived than the applause by which it was expressed; the d.u.c.h.ess had scarcely effected one of the strongest wishes of her heart,--the identification of what remained of her parents' bodies, and the magnificent ceremony with which they were removed from the cemetery of the Madeleine to the Abbey of St.

Denis,--when the escape of Napoleon from Elba in February,1815, scattered the royal family and their followers like chaff before the wind. The Duc d'Angouleme, compelled to capitulate at Toulouse, sailed from Cette in a Swedish vessel. The Comte d'Artois, the Duc de Berri, and the Prince de Conde withdrew beyond the frontier. The King fled from the capital. The d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, then at Bordeaux celebrating the anniversary of the Proclamation of Louis XVIII., alone of all her family made any stand against the general panic. Day after day she mounted her horse and reviewed the National Guard. She made personal and even pa.s.sionate appeals to the officers and men, standing firm, and prevailing on a handful of soldiers to remain by her, even when the imperialist troops were on the other side of the river and their cannon were directed against the square where the d.u.c.h.ess was reviewing her scanty followers.

["It was the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme who saved you," said the gallant General Clauzel, after these events, to a royalist volunteer; "I could not bring myself to order such a woman to be fired upon, at the moment when she was providing material for the n.o.blest page in her history."--"Fillia Dolorosa," vol. vii., p. 131.]

With pain and difficulty she was convinced that resistance was vain; Napoleon's banner soon floated over Bordeaux; the d.u.c.h.ess issued a farewell proclamation to her "brave Bordelais," and on the 1st April, 1815, she started for Pouillac, whence she embarked for Spain. During a brief visit to England she heard that the reign of a hundred days was over, and the 27th of July, 1815, saw her second triumphal return to the Tuileries. She did not take up her abode there with any wish for State ceremonies or Court gaieties. Her life was as secluded as her position would allow. Her favourite retreat was the Pavilion, which had been inhabited by her mother, and in her little oratory she collected relics of her family, over which on the anniversaries of their deaths she wept and prayed. In her daily drives through Paris she scrupulously avoided the spot on which they had suffered; and the memory of the past seemed to rule all her sad and self-denying life, both in what she did and what she refrained from doing.

[She was so methodical and economical, though liberal in her charities, that one of her regular evening occupations was to tear off the seals from the letters she had received during the day, in order that the wax might be melted down and sold; the produce made one poor family "pa.s.sing rich with forty pounds a year."--See "Filia Dolorosa," vol. ii., p. 239.]

Her somewhat austere goodness was not of a nature to make her popular. The few who really understood her loved her, but the majority of her pleasure-seeking subjects regarded her either with ridicule or dread. She is said to have taken no part in politics, and to have exerted no influence in public affairs, but her sympathies were well known, and "the very word liberty made her shudder;" like Madame Roland, she had seen "so many crimes perpetrated under that name."

The claims of three pretended Dauphins--Hervagault, the son of the tailor of St. Lo; Bruneau, son of the shoemaker of Vergin; and Naundorf or Norndorff, the watchmaker somewhat troubled her peace, but never for a moment obtained her sanction. Of the many other pseudo-Dauphins (said to number a dozen and a half) not even the names remain. In February,1820, a fresh tragedy befell the royal family in the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Duc de Berri, brother-in-law of the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, as he was seeing his wife into her carriage at the door of the Opera-house. He was carried into the theatre, and there the dying Prince and his wife were joined by the d.u.c.h.ess, who remained till he breathed his last, and was present when he, too, was laid in the Abbey of St. Denis. She was present also when his son, the Duc de Bordeaux, was born, and hoped that she saw in him a guarantee for the stability of royalty in France. In September, 1824, she stood by the death-bed of Louis XVIII., and thenceforward her chief occupation was directing the education of the little Duc de Bordeaux, who generally resided with her at Villeneuve l'Etang, her country house near St. Cloud. Thence she went in July, 1830, to the Baths of Vichy, stopping at Dijon on her way to Paris, and visiting the theatre on the evening of the 27th. She was received with "a roar of execrations and seditious cries," and knew only too well what they signified. She instantly left the theatre and proceeded to Tonnere, where she received news of the rising in Paris, and, quitting the town by night, was driven to Joigny with three attendants. Soon after leaving that place it was thought more prudent that the party should separate and proceed on foot, and the d.u.c.h.ess and M. de Foucigny, disguised as peasants, entered Versailles arm-in-arm, to obtain tidings of the King. The d.u.c.h.ess found him at Rambouillet with her husband, the Dauphin, and the King met her with a request for "pardon," being fully conscious, too late, that his unwise decrees and his headlong flight had destroyed the last hopes of his family. The act of abdication followed, by which the prospect of royalty pa.s.sed from the Dauphin and his wife, as well as from Charles X.--Henri V.

being proclaimed King, and the Duc d'Orleans (who refused to take the boy monarch under his personal protection) lieutenant-general of the kingdom.

Then began the d.u.c.h.ess's third expatriation. At Cherbourg the royal family, accompanied by the little King without a kingdom, embarked in the 'Great Britain', which stood out to sea. The d.u.c.h.ess, remaining on deck for a last look at the coast of France, noticed a brig which kept, she thought, suspiciously near them.

"Who commands that vessel?" she inquired.

"Captain Thibault."

And what are his orders?"

"To fire into and sink the vessels in which we sail, should any attempt be made to return to France."

Such was the farewell of their subjects to the House of Bourbon. The fugitives landed at Weymouth; the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme under the t.i.tle of Comtesse de Marne, the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri as Comtesse de Rosny, and her son, Henri de Bordeaux, as Comte de Chambord, the t.i.tle he retained till his death, originally taken from the estate presented to him in infancy by his enthusiastic people. Holyrood, with its royal and gloomy a.s.sociations, was their appointed dwelling. The Duc and d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, and the daughter of the Duc de Berri, travelled thither by land, the King and the young Comte de Chambord by sea. "I prefer my route to that of my sister," observed the latter, "because I shall see the coast of France again, and she will not."

The French Government soon complained that at Holyrood the exiles were still too near their native land, and accordingly, in 1832, Charles X., with his son and grandson, left Scotland for Hamburg, while the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme and her niece repaired to Vienna. The family were reunited at Prague in 1833, where the birthday of the Comte de Chambord was celebrated with some pomp and rejoicing, many Legitimists flocking thither to congratulate him on attaining the age of thirteen, which the old law of monarchical France had fixed as the majority of her princes. Three years later the wanderings of the unfortunate family recommenced; the Emperor Francis II. was dead, and his successor, Ferdinand, must visit Prague to be crowned, and Charles X. feared that the presence of a discrowned monarch might be embarra.s.sing on such an occasion. Illness and sorrow attended the exiles on their new journey, and a few months after they were established in the Chateau of Graffenburg at Goritz, Charles X. died of cholera, in his eightieth year. At Goritz, also, on the 31st May, 1844, the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, who had sat beside so many death-beds, watched over that of her husband. Theirs had not been a marriage of affection in youth, but they respected each other's virtues, and to a great extent shared each other's tastes; banishment and suffering had united them very closely, and of late years they had been almost inseparable,--walking, riding, and reading together. When the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme had seen her husband laid by his father's side in the vault of the Franciscan convent, she, accompanied by her nephew and niece, removed to Frohsdorf, where they spent seven tranquil years. Here she was addressed as "Queen" by her household for the first time in her life, but she herself always recognised Henri, Comte de Chambord, as her sovereign. The d.u.c.h.ess lived to see the overthrow of Louis Philippe, the usurper of the inheritance of her family. Her last attempt to exert herself was a characteristic one.

She tried to rise from a sick-bed in order to attend the memorial service held for her mother, Marie Antoinette, on the 16th October, the anniversary of her execution. But her strength was not equal to the task; on the 19th she expired, with her hand in that of the Comte de Chambord, and on 28th October, 1851, Marie Therese Charlotte, d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, was buried in the Franciscan convent.

The Ceremony of Expiation.

"In the spring of 1814 a ceremony took place in Paris at which I was present because there was nothing in it that could be mortifying to a French heart. The death of Louis XVI. had long been admitted to be one of the most serious misfortunes of the Revolution. The Emperor Napoleon never spoke of that sovereign but in terms of the highest respect, and always prefixed the epithet unfortunate to his name. The ceremony to which I allude was proposed by the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia. It consisted of a kind of expiation and purification of the spot on which Louis XVI. and his Queen were beheaded. I went to see the ceremony, and I had a place at a window in the Hotel of Madame de Remusat, next to the Hotel de Crillon, and what was termed the Hotel de Courlande.

"The expiation took place on the 10th of April. The weather was extremely fine and warm for the season. The Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia, accompanied by Prince Schwartzenberg, took their station at the entrance of the Rue Royale; the King of Prussia being on the right of the Emperor Alexander, and Prince Schwartzenberg on his left. There was a long parade, during which the Russian, Prussian and Austrian military bands vied with each other in playing the air, 'Vive Henri IV.!' The cavalry defiled past, and then withdrew into the Champs Elysees; but the infantry ranged themselves round an altar which was raised in the middle of the Place, and which was elevated on a platform having twelve or fifteen steps. The Emperor of Russia alighted from his horse, and, followed by the King of Prussia, the Grand Duke Constantine, Lord Cathcart, and Prince Schwartzenberg, advanced to the altar. When the Emperor had nearly reached the altar the "Te Deum" commenced. At the moment of the benediction, the sovereigns and persons who accompanied them, as well as the twenty-five thousand troops who covered the Place, all knelt down.

The Greek priest presented the cross to the Emperor Alexander, who kissed it; his example was followed by the individuals who accompanied him, though they were not of the Greek faith. On rising, the Grand Duke Constantine took off his hat, and immediately salvoes of artillery were heard."

NOTE.

The following t.i.tles have the signification given below during the period covered by this work:

MONSEIGNEUR........... The Dauphin.

MONSIEUR.............. The eldest brother of the King, Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII.

MONSIEUR LE PRINCE.... The Prince de Conde, head of the House of Conde.

MONSIEUR LE DUC....... The Duc de Bourbon, the eldest son of the Prince de Condo (and the father of the Duc d'Enghien shot by Napoleon).

MONSIEUR LE GRAND..... The Grand Equerry under the ancien regime.

MONSIEUR LE PREMIER... The First Equerry under the ancien regime.

ENFANS DE FRANCE...... The royal children.

MADAME & MESDAMES..... Sisters or daughters of the King, or Princesses near the Throne (sometimes used also for the wife of Monsieur, the eldest brother of the King, the Princesses Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie, Louise, daughters of Louis XV., and aunts of Louis XVI.)

MADAME ELISABETH...... The Princesse Elisabeth, sister of Louis XVI.

MADAME ROYALE......... The Princesse Marie Therese, daughter of Louis XVI., afterwards d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme.

MADEMOISELLE.......... The daughter of Monsieur, the brother of the King.