Marie Therese,
Child of Terror
Susan
Nagel
Reviewed
by Mary Lydon Simonsen, author of Pemberly Remembered
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. Because
of this, 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, after being forced to go to Paris, the king, queen, Marie
Therese,
and her brother, the Dauphin, Louis-Charles, are incarcerated in the
Temple Prison,
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. To that
end, she is determined to marry her cousin, Louis-Antoine, the Duc
d’Angouleme,
the son of the future Charles X, because she has been told that it
was her
father’s wish.
In the
years following her release from prison, Marie Therese and her husband
live a
peripatetic existence, finally ending up in England, where they watch the
events
unfolding in France.
When Napoleon abdicates in 1814, Louis XVIII, Marie Therese’s
uncle and
brother of her murdered father, return to France.
Despite cheering crowds shouting “Vive le Roi! Vive la Duchesse
d’Angouleme!,” the face she presents to the citizens of France is
one of quiet dignity and forgiveness. She
remembers her mother’s words, “I have
seen all, understood all, and forgotten all.”
When it
is learned that Napoleon has escaped from Elba and is marching
towards Paris with an army, Louis
XVIII flees
to Belgium, but his niece
chooses to go to Bordeaux to head a small army
of
Frenchmen. It is only when her cause
becomes
hopeless does she agree to leave the city, but her bravery is noted by
her
enemy: “She is the only man in the family.”
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’s final service to France was to supervise the
education
of the future Henri V and his sister.
Henri V would never ascend the throne because he refused to
recognize the
tricolor flag of the revolution. As with
Madame Royal, he remained faithful to the white flag of the Bourbon
dynasty.
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.