Customer Reviews

Marie-Therese, Child of Terror: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the last decade or so, there seems to be have been an explosion of nonfiction books about the French monarchy, with a special emphasis on Marie-Antoinette. But with all of this focus on Marie-Antoinette, there was one glaring omission that really struck me. Namely, no one was really talking about the one surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette -- their eldest daughter, Marie-Therese-Charlotte, Madame Royale.

Susan Nagel's biography finally gives a full picture to this story of a princess who went through tribulations that only a very few people could have survived. The early chapters deal with information that can be found in most histories about Marie-Antoinette and her marriage at the tender age of fourteen to the rather stolid and unattractive Louis-Auguste, the Dauphin (heir) to the throne of France. Both of them were rather uncertain of themselves, and very naive and didn't know very much about marriage. The result of that the relationship remained unconsummated for more than seven years, and was only resolved with the rather ribald advice of Marie-Antoinette's oldest brother, Emperor Joseph II.

And on December 19,1778, there was finally a Child of France born -- but not the son that everyone had been hoping and praying for. Instead, it was a daughter, who was named after her maternal grandmother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Both parents were delighted by the arrival of a healthy child, and soon enough both of them were besotted by her. For the little girl, while her life was surrounded by governesses and ceremonial, it was also a world of untold luxury, and within a few years, she had several siblings to share it with. Louis-Joseph would die young, but Louis-Charles, the younger, was a strong, sturdy young boy. Sadly, a fourth child, Sophie, would die in infancy. Surviving paintings show Marie-Therese as a smiling, blonde child with large blue eyes, either gazing up at her mother in adoration, or holding the hand of her little brother. She was also very precocious, headstrong, and wasn't above speaking her mind when she wanted to. She was utterly devoted to her father, and clearly loved her mother, despite some rather unflattering comments.

But all of this changed in 1789, when unrest and continuing hardship caused the Parisians to revolt, and caused Louis XVI to grant some concessions and call a national parlement -- unfortunately for him and his family, it would prove to be not quite enough. The king and queen were already suffering from a profound loss: the death of their eldest son, Louis-Joseph, who literally wasted away, and only days later the mob marched on Versailles and demanded that the Royal family move to Paris. For Marie-Therese, just ten years old, it was the begining of a time of trauma and deprevation. The fragile truce between the King and people only lasted two years, when revolutionary forces led by the Duc d'Orleans called for the King to be put on trial -- and the family were imprisoned in the Tower Prison in Paris.

Marie-Therese saw her parents taken away and her younger brother removed to another cell. She was only left with her aunt Madame Elizabeth, who in turn was sent to the guillotine. Isolated, Marie-Therese hung onto the only thing she had left, her pride, and lived in silence, not uttering a word to her guards. She would occansionally hear the screams of her brother as his guards abused and tortured him. By the time that more moderate politicans came to power, Marie-Therese was a wan, fragile seventeen year old, and would be exchanged for French prisoners of war that the Austrians were holding.

And it is here that most of the stories end.

I always wondered just what had happened to her. But most histories have skipped over her, and so this book was a real eye-opener. It turns out that Marie-Therese was a strong willed young woman, and no mean politician herself. During Napoleon's reign she would move from country to country in Europe, remaining a strong voice for the restoration of monarchy in France, and would stare down Napoleon's troops in the city of Bordeaux, daring them to fire on her and the citizens under her protection. Even Napoleon was impressed by her, calling her the "only real man in the family."

But her marriage to her cousin, Louis-Antoine, the Duc d'Angouleme, was made out of duty, and it would remain a childless, rather bleak arrangement. Worst still, there would be wild rumours of her brother surviving and being smuggled out of the Tower, and each fresh sighting would bring both anguish and hope to Marie-Therese.

In uncovering this story, an even greater mystery arises -- for Susan Nagel's weaves in not just what happened to Marie-Therese, but also the possibility of Louis XVI fathering two illegitimate children. One son was acknowledged to be part of the Polignac family, but the other created one of the most romantic legends in Europe -- the Dark Countess. Even today some maintain that the Dark Countess was actually Marie-Therese, rendered an imbecile from her treatment during imprisonment, and switched with her half-sister.

As to the validity of that rumour, Nagel leaves a good deal of it to the reader to figure out. She does provide most of the recent discoveries as to what happened to Louis-Charles, and continues the story of the Bourbon claimants to the French throne. Along with the narrative, which holds together pretty well, if a trifle rushed here and there, she includes some fascinating tidbits about other royalties at the time, including the Romanovs, the Hapsburgs, and the Georgians in England. Several genealogies, a timeline, notes, a map showing Marie-Therese's travels around Europe, and a bibliography round out this biography.

Summing up, this is a must read for anyone interested in Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. It's well-written, exciting, and has plenty for the reader to think about. Five solid stars, and one of the best non-fiction books that I have come across this year.

Highly recommended.

Marie Therese is the story of the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI of France. Because of their tragic end on the guillotine, the royal couple is a favorite of biographers and historical novelists, and the first third of the book recounts the circumstances that led to their execution, the difference being that, in Marie Therese, we are looking at these events through the eyes of a young girl. The downward spiral that began with the storming of the Bastille and led to the Reign of Terror started when Marie Therese was only 11 years old. While at Versailles, "Madame Royal" was forced to hide from armed mobs screaming for her mother's blood and to step over the butchered bodies of servants.

Three years later, the king, queen, Marie Therese, and her brother, the Dauphin, Louis-Charles, are incarcerated in the Temple Prison in Paris, and the horrors begin: the execution of her parents, the prolonged torture of her little brother who would die of neglect, and her own imprisonment. When she is finally released 3-1/2 years later, she is allowed to join her mother's brother, Emperor Franz II, in Austria. However, "The Orphan of the Tower" is now a young woman of steely resolve and one who recognizes the importance of her role as a representative of the Bourbon dynasty in exile.

In the years following her release from prison, Marie Therese and her husband, the Duc D'Angouleme, live a peripatetic existence, finally ending up in England, where they watch the events unfolding in France. With Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the Bourbon dynasty is again restored. For the next 15 years, France will be Marie Therese's home until, once again, the French want to be rid of their king, Charles X.

Marie Therese is an exhaustive, highly detailed account of the life of Madame Royal, the French Revolution, and the complexities of European politics in the early 19th century. In addition to the great events in the lives of the royals, minutiae, such as travel itineraries, meals, the appearances of numerous pretenders to the throne, are recorded. At times, the inclusion of so many mundane details bogs down the book, but for anyone who ever wanted to know what happened to the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, they will have to wonder no longer.

What a feat! My heart was racing from chapter to chapter, and I absolutely fell in love with Marie-Therese. Her world is drawn here with the forensic care of an Edith Wharton character. Nagel's obsessive research and beautifully detailed writing show Marie-Therese as a strong and credible survivor of the swing from Versailles luxury to tower imprisonment to fading and irrelevant royalty. Who needs pictures? Nagel so strongly evokes MT's loyalty and steadfast belief in a world that was literally decaying around her, I could feel the musty temperature of the rooms. Wow. What an accomplishment.

Out of the depths of time a life is reborn in the modern world. One very rarely heard anything about Marie-Therese before. A few lines here and there, a portrait in a book on her mother, etc. Nothing much about Marie's life. From the first page to the very end - you become part of the world of Marie-Therese. The author has a very easy flowing unique style that draws you in and hooks you - I really felt as if I had known this person. I absolutely loved this book. I found it so enjoyable to read. I highly recommend it - I don't think anybody could find fault with it (oh, yeah, except for the nit-pickers!). It is well worth it!!!

I loved this book. I have always wondered what happened to Marie Antoinette's daughter, and this really gives you a wonderfully detailed account of her life, and her feelings. Loved it.

"Marie-Thérèse: Child of Terror" by Susan Nagel is a greatly anticipated biography which provides an overview of the turbulent life of the courageous daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Rare anecdotes and little-known incidents are pulled together into one volume to make for a consuming read. I would especially recommend it to the readers of the novel Madame Royale since it fills in many gaps which the novel, being a novel, did not cover. The Duchesse d'Angoulême, who was in looks and personality a total blending of both parents, is portrayed as emerging from a tragic situation to become one of the most powerful women in Europe. The reader shares in her triumphs, in her falls, in her heartbreaks.

In most respects, Nagel quotes directly from the various memoirs to produce a highly favorable portrait of the royal family, although their foibles and faults are not ignored. The Revolution is seen mostly from Madame Royale's point of view, and her view is understandably not very benign, since as a young child she was forced to witness bloodshed and social chaos. One by one her immediate family members were led away to die. In the prison she could hear the tormented cries of her little brother but was not allowed to comfort him or visit him when he was sick. Did she hate the Revolution and all symbols of it? Yes.

With sensitivity and insight, Nagel does not hesitate to demonstrate how the faith of Marie-Thérèse sustained her through so many sorrows. The books also makes it clear that Marie-Thérèse was dedicated to France in almost the same way as a nun is dedicated to her vows. For Madame Royale, no sacrifice, personal or otherwise, was too great, if it benefited her country.

Rising above personal disappointments, Marie-Thérèse led a life rich in love, full of friends and devotion to the poor. I learned a great deal about her friendships with people such as Queen Louise of Prussia, Napoleon's "beautiful enemy," Louise's mother being a childhood friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette's. The Duchesse d' Angoulême's love of simplicity and her ability to relate so well to small children are qualities of which ample evidence is given. Most remarkable was her talent for stealing the show at certain crucial events, when she would appear magnificently dressed, with jewels and plumes that heightened her regal bearing, leaving no doubt in the minds of onlookers that she was the greatest princess of all.

Marie-Thérèse's struggles with her memories and sad feelings are explored and might have been explored a little more. The emphasis is on her energy and dynamism, which were certainly outstanding aspects of her character. The search for what happened to her brother and the various pretenders is touched upon, not exhaustively, but then there are other books which deal specifically with those phenomena. Many fascinating details of the life of the Duchesse d'Angoulême are included, most of which are taken from primary sources, and for those aspects I found it an enjoyable read. If a person is not an admirer of Marie-Thérèse and her family, they might find it all tiresome, but I hated for the book to end.

This is very well written, engaging book; I highly recommend it -- I've read quite a few books about Marie Antoinette, but this is the first one that really gets into the life of Mare-Therese after she is ransomed for the french prisoners. She had tremendous grace.

I confess I had some hope that Nagel's biography of Marie Antoinette's daughter would reveal fresh insight supported by new, revelatory research, but alas, my hopes were dashed but a few chapters into this obvious attempt to exploit a recent rush of Marie Antoinette-mania. Nagel's efforts to reveal her subject as a character worthy of our sympathy falls embarrassingly short of reaching the mark, since many previous, and frankly dismissive, historians nonetheless acknowledge the uniquely tragic circumstances that together formed the foundation of Marie Therese's years as Dauphine and beyond. Indeed, Marie Therese's psychological make-up isn't so difficult to understand: Her parents, king and queen, were executed, and instead of rising to the challenge of a united France that was clearly set before her, and in fact asked of her, she instead chose to nurture those old wounds, to all appearances becoming a vivid personification of national guilt and regicide. The withered, bitter center of a small, uninteresting circle of intimates, Marie Therese unsurprisingly offers little of herself to posterity, yet Nagel manages to stretch the uneventful majority of Marie Therese's adult years into a yawning soap opera with few, if any, enlivening details that might keep our interest. Moreover, Nagel attributes particular qualities to her subject, but without substantiating statements. For instance, we are asked to believe that at age 13, Marie Therese was acutely aware of her father's poor reputation among the crowned heads of Europe, though the author doesn't bother to support the claim. As many biographers of Marie Antoinette have pointed out, Marie Therese certainly inherited her mother's hauteur, but none of her charisma - a quality that makes Marie Antoinette 'good reading' today, just as it had in her own lifetime.

She was the only child of Marie Antoinette's who survived the Revolution. She lived through unimaginable horrors, lost her entire family, and came out with dignity and tremendous courage. Napoleon, whom she despised, called her "the only man in the family."
Susan Nagel has done a tremendous amount of research for this book, and she gives us the fascinating story of a remarkable woman. And while the writing is a little arid in some parts, most of this book is compelling and riveting. What a life!

Superbly written, fascinating subject, close bond between author and subject...what more could you ask for in a biography? I'm a great fan of books on the French Revolution and its aftermath but had never run across any book on Marie-Therese before. Sheds wonderful light on the Bourbon family and other nobles; an interesting new perspective on France in 1789-1850. Describes MT's strength of character, courage, determination and intelligence without fawning, and presents a well-rounded portrait of a woman with a backbone of steel (see Napoleon's compliment) without falling into the error of retroactive anachronistic feminism - MT was very much a product of her times, religious and outwardly subservient to her male relatives while managing to outshine so many of them and determinedly pursue her own agenda and her family's goals. One of the best books I have ever read on any subject. Please write another soon!