Nothing but tragedies in the life of Marie-Thérèse
Already at a young age tragedy struck the life of Marie-Thérèse. Here little sister Sophie died in 1787, only 11 months old. Her brother Louis Joseph, the Dauphin, died in 1789 at age 7 from tuberculosis.
A month later the political situation in France exploded by the fall of the bastille on 14 July 1789. This was followed by the march of an angry mob who invaded the Palace of Versailles on 5 October 1789. The royal family escaped the invaders by fleeing to the King's apartments, anxiously listening to the invaders wrecking the rooms of the palace. The life of the 10-year-old Madame Royale and her family changed for good. They would never return to Versailles. The crowd demanded the royal family to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. This was, in fact, their first prison, as they were watched constantly. The king's power evaporating into thin air.
The arrest of the Royal family in Varennes
On the evening of 20 June 1791, the 12-year-old Marie-Thérèse and her family dressed up and fled the Palace. They depicted a Russian aristocrat and her entourage. Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles both dressed as girls, played the children of a Russian lady. This lady was, in fact, their governess. Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI pretended to be her servants. The party made it to Varennes, close to the border, where they were caught. They were escorted back to Paris by thousands of armed men, both guards and citizens. This was a turning point for the French Royalty, their time was up.
This flight was considered treason by the revolutionary forces. Not soon after the royal family was moved to the Temple Tower, a medieval prison. Monarchy was abolished and the Royal family and nobility of France faced trial and death by the guillotine.
Marie-Thérèse spent over 3 years in the Temple Tower, from 13 August until 18 December 1795. She was imprisoned together with her father Louis XVI, her mother Marie Antoinette, her Aunt Elisabeth and her little brother Louis Charles. She was the only one to get out of there alive.
The first one to go was her father, Louis XVI, who was executed on the guillotine on 21 January 1793. Three women and a little boy remained behind.
With the King's death, the revolutionary rulers face a new problem. What to do with the little boy, eight-year-old Louis Charles? He was of course seen as the new King of France by the royalists. On 3 July 1793, he was taken away from his mother, sister and aunt, and put in a private cell on another floor of the tower.
A month later, on 2 August, Marie-Thérèse's mother Marie Antoinette was taken to the Conciergerie. There were now only two women left until Marie-Thérèse's aunt Élisabeth was taken away on 9 May 1794. Now Marie-Thérèse was completely alone. She is 15 years old when she writes these words on her cell wall:
"Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte est la plus malheureuse personne du monde. Elle ne peut obtenir de savoir des nouvelles de sa mère, pas même d'être réunie à elle quoiqu'elle l'ait demandé mille fois. Vive ma bonne mère que j'aime bien et dont je ne peux savoir des nouvelles. Ô mon père, veillez sur moi du haut du Ciel. Ô mon Dieu, pardonnez à ceux qui ont fait souffrir mes parents."
"Marie-Thérèse Charlotte is the most unhappy person in the world. She can obtain no news of her mother; nor be reunited to her, though she has asked it a thousand times. Live, my good mother! whom I love well, but of whom I can hear no tidings. O my father! watch over me from Heaven above. O my God! forgive those who have made my parents suffer."
She has only two books, 'The Imitation of Christ' and 'Voyages' by La Harpe she reads them over and over again. She does not know what happened to her parents and aunt. She can hear her brother cry through the walls of the temple tower, but has no contact with him. From June 8, 1795, she did not hear him anymore...
A few days after the death of her brother, a lady is sought to join Marie-Thérèse in her cell as a companion. Madame Renée de Chanterennewsa is picked for this job and started her duties on 15 June 1795. She is the one that tells Marie-Thérèse about the ill fate of her family members. Marie-Thérèse is devastated.
Marie-Thérèse in Vienna in 1796
Only after the death of Robespierre, the government began negotiating the release of Marie-Thérèse with her family members at the Austrian court.
She is liberated on 18 December 1795 in exchange for some French prisoners. She arrived in Vienna on 9 January 1796, where she initially lived at the Hofburg court of her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. The emperor expected her to marry his son Archduke Karl. Marie-Thérèse is not very fond of her Austrian relatives, who she thinks betrayed her mother; they did nothing to save her from the guillotine. So she leaves Viena very quickly to live with her French relatives.
Her father's eldest surviving brother, the Comte de Provence, lives in Jelgava Palace in Mitau, as a guest of Tsar Paul I of Russia. After the death of Marie-Thérèse's brother, he had proclaimed himself King of France as Louis XVIII. Together with many old courtiers that found exile at this palace, they tried to recreate the court life of Versailles. They even held the lever and coucher ceremonies as they did in Versailles.
Louis XVIII had no children of his own, so he planned the succession by asking Marie-Thérèse to marry her first cousin Louis-Antoine, Duc d'Angoulême. Louis-Antoine was the son of her fathers younger brother (and the future Charles X). Marie-Thérèse agrees and they get married on 10 June 1799.
Louis-Antoine of Artois, Duke of Angoulême. Husband of Marie-Thérèse of France
Napoleon I abdicates for the first time in 1814.
The long years of exile ended with the first Bourbon Restoration.
Louis XVIII stepped upon the throne of France, twenty-one years after the death of his brother Louis XVI.
Louis XVIII died on 16 September 1824 and was succeeded by his younger brother, the comte d'Artois, as Charles X. Marie-Thérèse became Dauphine of France, the last one as history would turn out.
In his apartments at the Tuileries, Louis XVIII receives the Duke of Angoulême and his wife Marie-Thérèse, the one on the left. Standing behind the King is his brother, Count d'Artois. He holds in his arms the little Henry, Duke of Bordeaux and Count of Chambord. The lady to the right is Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchesse de Berry, mother of Henry. The painting highlights the continuity of the Bourbon dynasty.