CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ARREST THE CARDINAL!
“By orders of the King, arrest the Cardinal!”
BARON DE BRETEUIL, MINISTER OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD, 15 AUGUST 1785
The inexplicable letter presented to the Queen on 12 July 1785 had in fact been dictated to the jeweller Boehmer by Cardinal de Rohan. This step on his part marked the culmination of a series of terrible anxieties, starting with the fact that it was he who had actually paid for the diamond necklace. Like Marie Antoinette, the Cardinal believed two things about the situation, both of which were untrue. First, he understood that the Queen had wanted to acquire the necklace but lacked the immediate funds to do so. Second, he was under the impression that by advancing—in stages agreed with the jewellers—the large sum of money required, he would secure his heart’s desire of gaining the Queen’s favour. She had not spoken to him publicly—let alone privately—since that distant day in Strasbourg when she was the bride of the Dauphin, and he, as Prince Louis, had been Coadjutor to his uncle the Bishop.1
Just as Marie Antoinette could not begin to guess at the meaning of Boehmer’s letter, so the Cardinal was equally at sea with what was happening. He could not understand, for example, why the Queen had not yet worn the necklace, although its public display was, as he thought, to be an indication of her gratitude. Most importantly, he could not understand why there had been no marks of royal favour, not even the slightest acknowledgement of his new status when that, after all, had been the whole object of the exercise.
Here then were two baffled people, Queen and Cardinal, neither of whom could in all fairness be expected to have guessed at the other’s assumptions; as a result both were to be rapidly seized with a violent sense of injustice. This indignation based on genuine ignorance, these raised passions, felt by both sides, were present in the Diamond Necklace Affair from the beginning and were to have a devastating effect on its course. The enormous gap between their two perceptions of reality, Queen and Cardinal, might indeed have made the whole matter material for a farce—except that in both cases, it turned out to be a tragedy.*63
A visit by Boehmer to Madame Campan at her country house on 3 August did little to clear matters up so far as the Queen’s role was concerned. Boehmer himself was by now extremely worried at not having received an answer to his letter. He asked the First Lady of the Bedchamber if she had anything to pass on to him, and when Madame Campan told him that the Queen had simply burnt his note, he lost his famous blandness and burst out: “That’s impossible! The Queen knows she has money to pay me!” So the full story emerged, or at least the full story as Boehmer knew it. It was a shocking and also an astonishing tale for anyone who, like the First Lady, had had long experience of the character of the Queen.
Here was Boehmer declaring that the Queen had acquired the Diamond Necklace for one and a half million francs. He also explained why he had put it about that he had sold the necklace in Constantinople: “The Queen desired me to give that answer to all who spoke to me on the subject.” Even more amazing was Boehmer’s statement that it was the Cardinal who had actually purchased the necklace on behalf of the Queen. When Madame Campan retorted that the Queen had not spoken to Rohan since his return from Vienna, Boehmer suggested that she must have been seeing him in private, for she had already given the Cardinal 30,000 francs.
“And the Cardinal told you all this?” gasped the First Lady.
“Yes, Madame, the Cardinal himself.”
Madame Campan’s advice was that Boehmer should go immediately to Versailles and seek an interview with Breteuil, the Minister of the Royal Household, since as Crown Jeweller, Boehmer was officially in his department. At the same time she expressed her amazement that such a “sworn officer” should conduct an important transaction like this, without direct orders from King, Queen or even Breteuil. At this point Boehmer made the most troubling statement of all: far from acting without direct orders, he had notes signed by the Queen in his possession, which he had shown to several bankers in order to stave off making his own payments. So Boehmer departed, leaving behind a bewildered Madame Campan to consult her father-in-law. The Librarian advised her not to go to the Queen at the Trianon but to leave it to Breteuil to sort out this unhappy business. Boehmer, however, did not go to Breteuil; he went straight to the Cardinal de Rohan in Paris. As a result of their confabulation, Rohan made a memorandum about the results of Boehmer’s visit to Madame Campan: “She told him that the Queen had never had his necklace and that he had been cheated.” The Cardinal and Boehmer now knew that some kind of disaster was in the making although neither of them quite knew the whole of it as yet. Only the Queen remained in ignorance.
Two or three days later, Marie Antoinette, who was at the Petit Trianon, refused to see Boehmer again. It was not until the Queen casually asked Madame Campan if she had any idea what the persistent jeweller wanted that the latter felt she must speak out, in spite of her father-in-law’s advice. Significantly, it was the question of the notes that she was supposed to have signed that was seized upon by Marie Antoinette: “She complained bitterly of the vexation.” Yet the Queen still could not conceive of the Cardinal being involved in such a business. The whole affair was “a labyrinth to her and her mind was lost in it”—a fair comment, perhaps, then and now.
Unfortunately the introduction of Breteuil, aided by Vermond, to discuss “what was proper to be done,” ended the Queen’s original non-committal and certainly not ungenerous attitude to Rohan. Breteuil was quite clever enough to see his chance to destroy his enemy, or at least to attempt to do so. Neither Breteuil, nor at a lower level of influence Vermond, nor indeed Count Mercy d’Argenteau, seems to have given any real thought as to the best way to handle this unpleasant imbroglio—as yet imperfectly understood—in a manner sensitive to the nuances of French court politics. Mercy’s agonizing physical condition had flared up again, making even travel to Versailles an endurance test.3 All three of them—the Queen’s protégé-minister, the Queen’s reader, the Queen’s chief advisor over fifteen years—thought of the narrow advantage of destroying Rohan, rather than the protection of the Queen’s reputation. Already so much damaged by the libelles, her good name should have been their prime concern.
So the stage was set for the confrontation between Queen and Cardinal, in the presence of the King and various ministers including Breteuil, on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (Marie Antoinette’s patronal feast). Even the method by which this confrontation was engineered was deliberately provocative, rather than firm but discreet. The Cardinal was already dressed in his sweeping scarlet “pontifical” robes, ready to celebrate Mass, when he was summoned to the King’s inner cabinet at noon. Here Louis XVI taxed Rohan with purchasing the diamonds from Boehmer and then asked him what he had done with them. “I was under the impression that they had been delivered to the Queen,” replied Rohan. “Who commissioned you to do this?” asked the King. Then for the first time, the name was mentioned in public that was to haunt all the participants of the Diamond Necklace Affair. “A lady called the Comtesse de Lamotte Valois,” was the Cardinal’s answer. He added that when he received a letter from the Queen at the hands of the Comtesse, he believed he was pleasing Her Majesty by taking the commission upon himself.
With indignation that had evidently been rising during this colloquy, Marie Antoinette interrupted Rohan. How could he believe that she would select him of all people for her emissary, a man to whom she had not spoken for eight years since his return from Vienna, “and especially through the mediation of such a woman?” With dignity, the Cardinal replied that he now saw plainly that he had been a dupe: “My desire to be of service to Your Majesty blinded me.” He then produced a note from the Queen to Jeanne de Lamotte, which commissioned him to purchase the necklace. It was signed “Marie Antoinette de France.”
It was the King who took the note and read it. His own outrage now took over. The letter was neither written nor signed by the Queen. How could a prince of the House of Rohan, the Grand Almoner himself, ever think that the Queen would sign “Marie Antoinette de France?” All the world knew that queens signed only their baptismal names. The Cardinal did not answer. Pale and bewildered, he felt unable to speak further in the royal presence. On being pressed by Louis XVI on matters to do with his own notes to Boehmer, Rohan agreed to write down a full account of “this enigma,” in the King’s words, in an inner cabinet. Rohan returned fifteen minutes later with an account that was as confused as his verbal answers had been.
This forged signature “Marie Antoinette de France” turned out to be a key element in the Diamond Necklace Affair because it prejudiced Louis XVI against the Cardinal. Breathing royal etiquette since birth, the King simply could not understand how a courtier, and above all a Rohan, a member of a family so keen on the details of status, could make such a mistake.*64 There was indeed general amazement on the subject at court. It was not as if the question of queens (and other royalties) using simple baptismal names was blurred. On the contrary, it was a privilege proudly maintained; a friend of the Prince de Ligne once advised him, as a rule of self-advancement at court, to keep close to those whose forenames were sufficient for their signature.4 Marie Antoinette, who had used “Antoine” as a child, still used “Antoinette” alone very occasionally in family letters where she signed them (mainly she did not). On all her formal correspondence, the Queen of France was loftily “Marie Antoinette,” with no need of qualification.5
Echoing the question of Louis XVI, how could the Cardinal have been taken in by such a signature? This is to assume that the Cardinal did not actually forge it himself. Although for some time this would be the King’s angry conviction, he was wrong on this issue. Rohan’s own trial brief for his defence would later make the reasonable point that if the Cardinal had really been either the forger or his accomplice, the matter would have been handled more intelligently. “While it was certainly surprising that he accepted such a signature as genuine, it would have been quite amazing if he had been the author of it.”6
The simplest explanation of the Cardinal’s credulity is probably the true one. It lies in humanity’s infinite capacity for self-deception where some perceived (and in this case long-desired) advantage is at stake. In short, the Cardinal was part of a system that made the royal favour so essential that people resorted to desperate measures to acquire it. Added to this must be the undoubted genius of that seductive “Circe,” Jeanne de Lamotte Valois, as a con woman. The Cardinal was not the only prey of tricksters to find his own gullibility impossible to credit afterwards when the spell was broken. Besides which there was something naive about his character. This streak no doubt was the product of his vanity, the vanity of a man brought up since childhood to believe himself superior just because he was a Rohan, and thus unused to being checked; it was this that made the Queen’s hostility—inexplicable to him—so hard to bear.
The Cardinal de Rohan was, for example, equally impressed by the brilliant charlatan known as Count Cagliostro, who, despite origins in the Sicilian peasantry, “seduced him into the treacherous bypaths of the occult and supernatural,” in the words of his own Grand Vicar, the Abbé Georgel. It is true that Cagliostro’s claims to know the mysteries of the ages, having been born an Egyptian thousands of years ago, fascinated all Europe at the time, along with his hypnotic appearance; the expression in his eyes was “all fire and yet all ice,” wrote the Baronne d’Oberkirch. (But she did at least spot that his accent was Italian, despite his supposed Arab birth.) This was, after all, a society in which the claims of Franz Mesmer to effect cures by the use of “animal magnetism” were also taken seriously. The Baronne d’Oberkirch visited him too, and he fascinated among others the Marquis de La Fayette as well as Marie Antoinette herself, although it was the scientific-minded Louis XVI who initiated the investigation that caused Mesmer’s fall from Parisian favour.7 But the fact was that Prince Louis was no match for adventurers in whatever guise they came. Where worldly wisdom was concerned, he may have been a Rohan, but he was also a fool.
Psychologically the King could not accept that, so he took the easier step of believing Rohan to be a villain. By now Marie Antoinette, who had begun as a sceptic, found it only too easy to agree; her low opinion of Rohan was only reinforced by the production of the forged signature. Armand de Miromesnil, who was present as Keeper of the Seals, had the sense to query the propriety of arresting the Cardinal in such a sensational manner while he was wearing his pontifical robes. But that is in fact exactly what now happened, when the Cardinal returned from writing down his personal account of the affair. Breteuil, Rohan’s enemy, was put in charge, ordered to seal all the Cardinal’s papers in his Paris house and have him taken to the prison of the Bastille.
Perhaps the King still smarted inwardly over Rohan’s appointment as Grand Almoner in 1777; on that occasion the former Governess to the Children of France had defeated the wishes of Marie Antoinette, leaving Louis XVI himself to cope with his wife’s resentment. When Rohan was told of his fate, he protested by invoking the names of his powerful relatives, the Comtesse de Marsan and the Prince de Soubise, and “the reputation of my family name.” This certainly exasperated the King. He replied sharply that he would try to console the Cardinal’s relations as best he could. In the meantime, he did what he must “as a king and a husband.” It was a reiteration of his words to Miromesnil over the need for immediate action: “The name of the Queen is precious to me and it has been compromised.”
Louis XVI’s instinctive and honourable support of his wife was the next key element in the affair. The King’s chivalry was evoked, and as has been noted over the various libellous publications, he was always quick to rush to the defence of her reputation. Commenting on the news to Vergennes about how the Cardinal had made use of the Queen’s name to secure a valuable necklace, Louis XVI declared that “it was the saddest and most horrifying business that he had ever come across.”8 From the Queen’s point of view, this firmness from a man normally so vacillating was a heartwarming development. Ironically enough, the royal couple, still not quite grasping what could happen to them in terms of public opinion, were entering a newly harmonious stage in their relationship. Marie Antoinette repeatedly and happily praised the King’s behaviour to her brother, relating how she had been much touched by the prudence and resolution he had displayed. When details of the affair were discussed with his ministers, the King took care to do so in the presence of the Queen; this was quite a new development, which sprang directly from his feeling that his wife had been hatefully traduced.
The trouble was that the chivalry of the husband prevented him from appreciating the wisest course for the sovereign. Whatever the Cardinal had done—and it was quite reasonable at this point for both King and Queen to see him as a conspirator, if not a forger—he still held a prominent ecclesiastical position at court and was a member of a family powerfully vociferous in the interests of its own. Vergennes, supported by the Marquis de Castries, who was not normally in agreement with him, believed that some special discreet tribunal should be used. If only Vergennes, an experienced and sagacious negotiator who was on good terms with Rohan, had been allowed to manage the affair! But Vergennes and Breteuil were enemies, while Mercy, who might have offered wiser counsels, also disliked Vergennes personally and was jealous on the Queen’s behalf of his influence over the King. Instead Rohan was offered a choice of pleading openly for clemency to the King or being tried by the Parlement de Paris. Rohan’s choice of the Parlement, whatever the verdict, both prolonged matters and took them into the political arena. Matters such as the rights of princes and the independence of the Parlement became inextricably entwined with the quite separate issue of the Cardinal’s guilt and the Queen’s reputation.9
Breteuil had a face “beaming with satisfaction” as on 15 August he issued the orders of the King: “Arrest the Cardinal de Rohan!” He did not know that there was in fact very little cause for rejoicing. A performance of Beaumarchais’ Le Barbier de Séville at the Trianon Theatre found Marie Antoinette playing the girl Rosina, the young Duc de Guiche as her crabbed guardian Doctor Bartolo, Vaudreuil as Figaro and Artois as the amorous Count Almaviva. The Queen was equally unaware that it was to be her last appearance on the stage there.10
Even now the Cardinal showed that, gullible as he might be in many ways, he remained quick-witted. Taking advantage of an inexperienced guard, he managed to get a rapidly pencilled note to Georgel back at his house, instructing him to burn all his papers to do with the Comtesse de Lamotte. By the time Breteuil came to impose his seals, much of the evidence about the Diamond Necklace Affair, the “labyrinth” in the words of Marie Antoinette, this “enigma” in the words of Louis XVI, had vanished for ever. Added to this must be the fact that Jeanne de Lamotte Valois herself proved to be an imaginative liar on a grand scale, so that very little she said can be trusted.
The result is that the affair can never be unravelled with complete conviction as to all its details, although some things can be stated with absolute certainty about it. One of these is the innocence of the Queen; she had no prior involvement with or advance knowledge of the affair. Wild suggestions that Marie Antoinette manipulated the whole case in order to ruin the Cardinal not only ignore the fact that she had for years been successfully using her own best weapon of the freezing royal silence against him, but they also seriously misread her character. Never politically machiavellian, as Mercy constantly complained, the Queen was incapable of conceiving, let alone carrying out, such an elaborate conspiracy. It involved among other things deliberately signing “Marie Antoinette de France,” first to hoax Rohan, then to expose him, a ploy that could, of course, easily have gone wrong if Rohan had exercised normal common sense about the signature of the Queen.*65
The Queen’s complete surprise and shock is well attested, as is the way she persistently underrated the seriousness of what was happening in the months to come. On 22 August she told Joseph II about the “catastrophe” of the Cardinal de Rohan in a letter that reiterated the fact that she had never in her life signed “Marie Antoinette de France,” the point on which she felt so keenly. She now thought the actual signature was that of Jeanne de Lamotte, a woman of low rank who had never had any access to her personally. Marie Antoinette was confident that all the details would soon be made clear to the whole world, which would put an end to the matter. A month later, it was the Cardinal whom Marie Antoinette castigated as a “vile and clumsy forger,” motivated by the need for money to pay his own debts to the jewellers. “For my part I am delighted we shall hear no more of this horrible business,” wrote the Queen blithely to her brother.12 Her main concern was the inoculation of the Dauphin, who was not quite four, against smallpox, which took place at Saint Cloud under her supervision. It went well enough although the poor delicate little boy had suffered terribly with two different sets of pustules erupting.
What then did actually happen and how did the Cardinal de Rohan end up with a forged note of repayment from the Queen of France at the hands of an adventuress? For that matter, why were contemporaries so fascinated by the whole tangled affair? The second question is easier to answer than the first. As an intrigue the affair had every element over which the prurient could gloat: the wicked Queen; the corrupt Prince of the Church; the beautiful impoverished heroine, Jeanne, with her royal blood (as in a fairy story—princess-as-beggar-maid) caught up with these lascivious monsters . . . Even the theme of the diamonds was a help to pornographers since the word for jewels (bijoux) was a code for the female genitalia. (Les Bijoux Indiscrets, a tale by Diderot, had the eponymous “jewels” relating their adventures.) One caricature showed the Queen with open legs being regarded by the Duc de Coigny as the Princesse de Lamballe held the necklace aloft. In another way the drama was much to contemporary taste because it echoed the kind of plot to be seen currently on the French stage.13 All this meant that the web of fantasy spun around the innocent Queen and the foolishly naive Cardinal was much easier to accept than the actual truth: that the whole thing was a criminal conspiracy.
So far as it can be pieced together, this is the outline of what had happened behind the scenes before the “catastrophe” of the Cardinal in August 1785.*66 About the only thing that was true in the contemporary perception of the affair was Jeanne’s background. Although she was brought up in virtual beggary by her peasant mother, she did have royal Valois blood, her wastrel of a father being descended illegitimately from King Henri II. Whether or not he told her on his deathbed never to forget she was a Valois—he also incidentally told her, “Never dishonour the name”—Jeanne certainly emerged from a fairly louche girlhood with ambitions.
Married in 1780 at the age of twenty-four to Nicolas de Lamotte, who simply assumed the rank of Comte and added Valois to his name, Jeanne had several other protectors. Her aim, however, was to secure some kind of pension by right of her Valois blood, for which reason she was among the crowds haunting Versailles, seeking advancement by personal petition. Her special wish was to get access to the Queen, who was renowned for her impulsive philanthropy, but it is unlikely that this happened in any formal manner—that is, if she ever came anywhere near to Marie Antoinette during the frequent daily ceremonies of Versailles that the public attended, for she was certainly not presented to her. Once Jeanne’s portrait was engraved and widely disseminated for the general delectation, a copy was procured discreetly by Madame Campan at the Queen’s orders to see if it would jog her memory.14 It did not. In the meantime Jeanne’s Valois story did secure some patronage from the Comtesse de Provence, and finally a modest pension.
Jeanne met the Cardinal de Rohan as early as 1783; they had some kind of liaison, although Jeanne was by now living virtually à trois with her husband and her lover Rétaux de Villette. It was no doubt the presence of Rétaux de Villette in her household that encouraged Jeanne to show the Cardinal friendly letters addressed to “my cousin the Comtesse de Valois” by the Queen of France, since Villette, among his other talents, was an accomplished forger. By spending time in the Cardinal’s company, Jeanne became well aware of his obsession about Marie Antoinette’s favour. And so the elements for the sting were in place.
At some point Jeanne and her husband, with the active participation of Rétaux de Villette, conceived of a plot to rob the Cardinal (and the jewellers) of a large sum of money—as well as of the gemstones themselves. The Queen’s commission to the Cardinal to acquire the necklace that she apparently coveted, and the arrangements she made for gradual repayment, were of course forged. The happy jewellers were delighted to negotiate the exceptionally low figure of 1,600,000 francs for the necklace, a reduction of 200,000 francs on the original asking price. At all points the false Queen in her notes urged the Cardinal to be discreet. It was the impersonation of Marie Antoinette at night in the gardens of Versailles—in the well-named Grove of Venus—that was, however, the master stroke. The Comte de Lamotte went to the promenade of the Palais-Royal, frequented by the ladies of the town, and picked out a young professional called Nicole d’Oliva whose salient characteristic was her astonishing resemblance to Marie Antoinette. Although Nicole d’Oliva was in her early twenties, with the fresh air of a girl painted by Greuze, she did have the well-known profile, including, one assumes, the Habsburg lip. In any case she was to appear to the Cardinal with her face obscured by some kind of headdress, and wearing one of the white muslin dresses the Queen often wore, all in semi-darkness.
The impersonation succeeded. A rose was offered to the Cardinal—a flower adopted by the Queen as her symbol, as everyone had seen in Vigée Le Brun’s recent portrait—and the magic words were uttered that the Cardinal wanted to hear above all others: “You may now hope that the past will be forgotten.” The resemblance between this scene and that at the end of Figaro, where the Countess Almaviva appears, veiled, in a dark shrubbery, to her own husband in the guise of her maid Suzanne, is too great to be coincidental. The pity of it was that the Cardinal did not reflect on the coincidence himself. As to the Queen’s notes that followed, the Cardinal might also have reflected on a notorious case in which the Dame Cahouet de Villers used notes forged in the Queen’s handwriting in order to secure goods from Rose Bertin for herself. At one point the Queen had even been seen to signify her approval of this transaction as though at a prearranged signal, (the forger had in fact taken advantage of one of Marie Antoinette’s unconscious traits which was to nod her head regularly at a certain point on her journey to Mass).15 The Dame had ended up in the Bastille. With the false courage of audacity, Jeanne and her associates were confident of succeeding where she had failed.
Once the diamond necklace was secured from Boehmer, its fate was to be taken to London by the Comte de Lamotte. There it was shown to the English jewellers Grey and Jefferies in the form of loose gems, some of which had been so roughly prised out of their settings that they were damaged. Lamotte’s story was that he had inherited the diamonds from his mother, but he was prepared to accept such an astonishingly low price, given their real value, that the English jeweller prudently checked first with the London police as to whether there had been a recent burglary. Satisfied, he accepted the gems. And so the controversial diamond necklace proceeded on its mysterious way.*67
The conspiracy, unlike the diamond necklace itself, began to emerge into the open when Jeanne de Lamotte was unable to maintain the modest repayments by which “the Queen” kept the Cardinal and Boehmer quiescent; she could not, of course, secure that display of the necklace at the white throat of the Queen of France that her victims continued to expect. So Cardinal and jewellers both found themselves owed money; questions began to be asked, which led to Boehmer’s note to the Queen, dictated by the Cardinal, of 12 July. Shortly after the arrest of the Cardinal, and following his statement, Jeanne was arrested; her lover, the forger Rétaux de Villette, was brought back from Geneva where he had fled; the hapless Nicole d’Oliva, who had imagined she was being hired for sexual services, not to impersonate the sovereign, was also arrested. Cagliostro too was detained as being part of the plot but he at least mounted a magnificent defence; he was guilty, he said, of no crime beyond the murder of Pompey at the orders of the Pharaoh in ancient Egypt. (He was subsequently acquitted either for his sheer audacity or more likely because he was actually not guilty.) The Comte de Lamotte remained at liberty in London.
The Queen’s thirtieth birthday fell on 2 November 1785. It was a date that she took seriously. Marie Antoinette told Rose Bertin that her outfits must have more gravity; she renounced wearing her beloved flowers in her headdresses in favour of more matronly (and, to the modern eye, far less becoming) velvet poufs. Six months later the Duke of Dorset told Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire that their mutual friend “Mrs. Brown” (meaning Bourbon), as they nicknamed Marie Antoinette in correspondence, now looked on herself as “an old woman,” though he added loyally that she “never was handsomer” than when she had appeared yesterday at the hunt at Marly. The fact was that the Queen was beginning to put on weight, and was in the majesty of her appearance; spring had given way to summer and a ripening summer at that. The Comte d’Hezecques made the point that her carriage became especially proud and regal as she faced the anonymous slanders over the diamond necklace. She might now be “rather stout” but to illustrate her dignity, he quoted a passage from Fénelon; as the Queen proceeded to Mass in stately fashion, the plumes of her headdress shook, and she dominated all the other ladies of the court as a great oak rises above all the other trees of the forest.17
Some of this perceived stoutness can probably be attributed to a new pregnancy that began about the time of her birthday, when the Queen had not completely recovered her figure from the birth of the Duc de Normandie earlier in the same year. It was certainly an important point that throughout the months that followed, in which her unpopularity would reach unprecedented heights, the Queen herself was not only pregnant but feeling ill with it. This pregnancy, unlike the previous three which resulted in live births, never seems to have gone well from the start. For some time there was real doubt about whether the Queen was actually enceinte, and it was not until February that she confirmed the fact to Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt. Count Mercy, having believed at the end of January that the suspension of the Queen’s règles mensuelles was due to her distress over the Diamond Necklace Affair, wrote only on 10 March 1786 that she was expecting a child at the end of July. Court rumours sped around that the Queen was annoyed to find herself pregnant once more, on the grounds that she had already produced two male heirs; she herself told Joseph that she thought she had enough children and that this birth might have severe implications for her health. The Duke of Dorset told Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire that he would keep “a sharp eye on the bambino: without spectacles I can guess who it will most resemble.” But this was enjoyable if scurrilous gossip among friends. Once again Louis XVI never questioned the baby’s paternity so one may assume that his conjugal visits had not ceased—and Fersen’s measures to avoid conception also continued.18
Marie Antoinette’s reluctance may have simply been due to feeling ill; alternatively she may have felt that the gap between the two pregnancies was too short. It is more likely that she was expressing a kind of generalized melancholy at the way things were turning out for the worst in every department of her life. The Treaty of Fontainebleau of 9 November 1785 brought to an end “the Dutch mischief” at last as the Emperor abandoned his claims to the Scheldt. But France’s subsequent defensive alliance with the Dutch manifestly did not advance the interests of Austria. Marie Antoinette was left protesting—as usual—to her brother that the Franco-Austrian alliance was more precious to her than to anyone, without having any opportunity to exercise her influence in its favour.
If there was no comfort to be derived from France’s foreign policy, neither did matters nearer home provide solace. By the beginning of December, all Paris was agog at the publication of Jeanne de Lamotte’s trial brief, which contained a torrent of abuse directed at the Queen, filling in the details of the latter’s supposed sexual intrigue with the Cardinal. Humiliating as the charge was for Marie Antoinette, given her total dislike for Rohan, it was gleefully accepted by the public. As Fersen reported to the Swedish King as early as September 1785, everybody believed that the Queen had fooled the King. These trial briefs, in theory addressed to the courts, were printed in advance and read avidly; Nicole d’Oliva’s trial brief, for example, appearing in March 1786, sold 20,000 copies. They provided an excellent opportunity to disseminate sensational and scandalous stories without the possibility of contradiction.19
Private sadness completed the cycle. On 12 December 1785 Princess Charlotte, who had married her sister’s widower with the “terrible presentiment” that she too would die in childbirth, fulfilled the gloomy prophecy. She died at the age of thirty, having been married for not much more than a year, leaving a son, Auguste. Marie Antoinette was devastated. She told Princess Louise: “I shall conserve all my life my memory of her and my regret at her death,” and she asked for her own portrait, originally given to Charlotte, to be handed on to Auguste.20
The trial of the Cardinal by the Parlement de Paris in May 1786, and of the other accused conspirators, took place in a charged atmosphere in which the truth of the Diamond Necklace Affair was likely to be the first casualty. Almost everyone involved had another agenda. The King refused to allow the Queen to appear on the grounds that he himself was the fount of justice in the country and it would therefore be inappropriate. So her testimony was written down and submitted. She herself was anxious that the details of the spurious meeting in the Grove of Venus should not enter the public record because she knew perfectly well the use that the libellistes would make of such colourful material. (In the event it was not struck out and she was quite right in her prediction.) The Parlement de Paris in turn was anxious to assert its independence, while the Princes were determined not to allow this attack on their rank—as they saw it—to succeed. Vergennes, preferring to injure Breteuil rather than protect his master, chose to involve himself behind the scenes with Rohan’s interests.21
For the King and Queen all of this took place against the bizarre background of a family visit from Marie Antoinette’s brother and sister-in-law, the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Beatrice d’Este, who, incognito as “the Count and Countess Nellembourg,” arrived on 11 May and left on 17 June. Marie Antoinette had not seen Ferdinand, the brother who had acted as her proxy bridegroom, for sixteen years.
The Archduchess Beatrice had gone down well at the English court in the autumn of 1785, her appearance being gallantly described by Queen Charlotte as “not handsome but pleasing which lasts longer.”22 Her remarkable intellectual achievements—she read Greek and Latin—were also pardoned on the grounds that she was extremely modest about them. At Versailles, however, the Archduchess’s birth, which was not strictly speaking royal, was liable to cause predictable problems. It was particularly complicated since the Princesse de Conti, a Princess of the Blood, but not of course a member of the inner royal family, was her aunt . . . As the great ladies decided who should call and when, and a series of lavish entertainments was given at the Trianon and elsewhere, a far greater drama was being played out in Paris.
On 4 June 1786 the Queen, still concerned with the details of her brother’s seemingly endless visit, wrote a short note of instruction to Count Mercy. She added a short meaningful postscript: “What do you think of the verdict?” She might well ask. The Parlement had delivered it on 31 May. The underlings were treated comparatively lightly, Nicole d’Oliva being acquitted with only a reprimand for impersonating the sovereign, and the forger Rétaux de Villette banished with his goods forfeit. But the Lamottes—he in absentia—were handed out ferocious sentences, including flogging, branding and life imprisonment. However explicable by the penal standards of the time, considering the nature of their criminal acts, these punishments still have a chilling sound.
But the Cardinal de Rohan was acquitted by the Parlement de Paris. He had to apologise publicly for his “criminal temerity” in believing he had had a night-time rendezvous with the Queen of France and he must seek the monarchs’ pardon; he had to divest himself of all his offices, make a donation to the poor and be banished from the court for ever. But he was free. The Parlement had believed in his good faith. As to that fatal assumption on the part of the Cardinal that the veiled figure in the Grove of Venus was the Queen murmuring invitingly in his direction, it was by implication a legitimate assumption.23 It was the most damning denunciation of the Queen’s way of life, as it was intended to be.
Dressed in purple robes, the colour of mourning for a Cardinal, Rohan received his sentence. Around him were eighteen members of the family of Rohan, all dressed in the less striking mourning colour of black. His fate, however, was enviable compared to that of Jeanne de Lamotte. She was stripped naked and beaten by the public executioner, then publicly branded as a thief, with the letter V for voleuse, in front of a huge crowd of prurient spectators. Jeanne struggled and screamed so much that the burning brand missed her shoulder and marked her breast. She was then taken to the women’s prison of the Salpêtrière to serve a life sentence.
The marks upon the Queen’s reputation were equally searing. Although not physically painful, they too would prove a source of torment. They were also ineradicable. When the news of the verdict was first conveyed to her, Marie Antoinette shut herself up in her inner cabinet and wept. To Madame Campan, she burst out in indignation that there was no justice in France. If she, the Queen, had not found impartial judges in a matter that sullied her good name, how would an ordinary woman like Madame Campan hope for justice in a matter that touched her honour? The King’s comment to the First Lady was brief but eloquent. It also showed that he did not accept the Cardinal’s innocence: “You will find the Queen greatly afflicted and she has good reason to be so. But what can one say? They [the Parlement de Paris] were determined only to see a Prince of the Church, a Prince de Rohan, while he was in fact just a greedy man who needed money.”24
Finally the Archduke and Archduchess left, their last days clouded by the verdict; a great fête on 7 June had to be cancelled as inappropriate. Count Fersen left too for England, where he was goggled at by the smart English, who were friends of Marie Antoinette, and nicknamed “the Picture” for his handsome looks. Even the King left the Queen’s side. He went to Cherbourg and other seaports on an eight-day visit. His Journal recorded inspection of harbours and coastal works, and dinners aboard ships such as the Patriote. He arrived back at Versailles on 29 June 1786.25
As the father of the family returned, the Queen greeted him on the balcony of the palace with her three children, Madame Royale aged six and a half, the Dauphin approaching five, and the Duc de Normandie at fifteen months. Touching cries of “Papa! Papa!” were heard from the balcony. The King flung himself hastily out of his carriage to embrace them all. He was flushed with the success of his journey, during which he had demonstrated real technical and naval knowledge with his questions; in consequence he had conducted himself with an ease and bonhomie unknown at Versailles. After his departure from Harcourt, the people, much impressed by his goodness, were said to have kissed the sheets left behind on the royal bed. The day after his return, Louis XVI returned to his normal routine of hunting, which he had briefly interrupted for the coastal tour.26
Ten days later the Queen began to feel unwell. At first she denied that these could be labour pains. She continued with her own routine, which included Mass in the Royal Chapel. It was not until four-thirty in the afternoon that the ministers whose presence was obligatory, including Breteuil, were summoned. Three hours later, at seven-thirty in the evening on 9 July, the baby was born. It was a girl, instantly named Sophie Hélène Béatrice, and to be known as Sophie for the late Madame Sophie, the King’s aunt, who had died of dropsy four years earlier. Mesdames Tantes were consulted about the choice of name; would it revive painful memories of their beloved sister? The royal aunts replied that they had absolutely no objection; on the contrary they would love their new (great-) niece more than ever.27
The Emperor Joseph was his usual frank self when he observed that it was a pity the baby was not a third son. The King on the other hand was extremely cheerful when he told the Spanish ambassador: “It’s a girl.” The ambassador was equally so when he replied with a gallant reference to the marriage prospects of the new Princesse: “As Your Majesty keeps his Princes at his side, he now has a means [his daughters] of bestowing presents on the rest of Europe.”28 From the first, however, such an august destiny for the new Madame Sophie seemed unlikely. There must be a strong presumption that she was premature, not only taking into account Mercy’s original prediction of the end of July, and the Queen’s unwillingness to believe she was in labour, but also the fact that the King had gone on his coastal tour so close to the baby’s birth.
The baby did not flourish. The Dauphin’s fevers continued to torment him, and to agonise his parents. As for Marie Antoinette’s mood, it was one of rising “outrage” over the treatment of her “honour.” As Count Mercy told the Austrian Foreign Minister, Prince Kaunitz, she felt she had not been in any way avenged for all the disgust and pain she had felt.29