Marie Therese had a difficult life, starting out by being imprisoned for nearly four years
and her family members being taken away from her one by one. She was exiled twice
and died without children. This is the tragic real-life story of Marie Antoinette's daughter.
Louis XVI was the second surviving son of Louis, the Dauphin of France who died at the
age of thirty six. His brother, the favorite, also died young, and so Louis XVI, then Louis Auguste,
was thrust into the spotlight as dauphin of France, meaning he was the heir apparent to
the French throne. Marie Antoinette was the fifteenth child of the Holy Roman Emperor,
Francis I and in 1770 she and Louis were married at the ages of 14 and 15, respectively.
Neither were given the proper education to run such a large country as France,
and neither had the temperament for it. Marie Antoinette, for example,
was a poor reader and was more interested in card games.
Louis XVI inherited an economically broken country which he did not succeed in cleaning up.
The French king also had problems in the bedroom and was unable to initiate
intimacy with his wife. Madame Antoinette, on the other hand,
was interested, but found it hard to start anything with her husband,
so it's not hard to see why she began hosting lavish parties and card games. The couple did
not have their first child, Marie Therese, until they had been married for eight years.
Marie Therese of France was born on Dec. 19, 1778, at Versailles and was baptized the same day.
After learning her gender, Marie Antoinette supposedly said,
"Poor little one, you are not desired, but you will be none the less dear to
me! A son would have belonged to the state — you will belong to me."
Marie Therese was the oldest daughter of four children. She was quickly nicknamed
"Muslin the Serious" by her mother, as she was a very solemn and serious child.
Marie Antoinette's brothers had become very ambitious in regards to the French throne while
Louis and Marie were trying to get pregnant in the 1770's. It only helped their cause
that their first child was a girl, who could not rule France in her own right. In addition,
the French people were frustrated that the King was not able to fix the country's finances,
and that would only get worse as time went on.
Marie Therese was quickly joined by three siblings, two of whom died in early childhood.
Marie Antoinette became a devoted mother and Marie Therese was a great comfort for her.
In turn, Marie Antoinette would teach her first born to have compassion and respect for others.
Louis and Marie adopted several children, only some of whom lived with the family,
including one girl who was to be Marie Therese's playmate. To hide from her growing unpopularity,
Marie Antoinette took her children to the Petit Trianon, a small chateaux on the Versaille estate.
It was idyllic, secluded and, more importantly, far from the all-seeing eyes of the court.
"May I present you with your new retreat. The Petit Trianon."
During Marie Therese's childhood, her mother's fickle character and
lavish spending would forever tarnish her reputation with the French people.
Certain scandals would fuel the French people's frustration with the monarchy, such as the
long winded Diamond Necklace Affair, which implicated the Queen in defrauding the crown.
At this time, the French coffers were depleted due, in part, to France's financial support of
the American Revolutionary War. The French Treasury was largely propped up, though,
by persistently taxing the French people. This fueled distrust and anger toward the monarchy,
leading to the storming of the Bastille in 1789,
in which over 100 people were slaughtered. Marie Therese was 11-years-old at the time.
King Louis attempted to appease the people by opening the French parliament for the
first time in over 100 years. However, the recent dismissal of the favored minister
Jacques Necker further angered the populace. So, on October 5th,
the royal family was moved to the Tuileries Palace for their safety.
On top of these political struggles, Marie Therese lost two of her siblings.
Her younger sister Sophie died at just over a year old,
and her brother Louis Joseph died at the age of 7 from tuberculosis of the spine.
As civil unrest increased, King Louis and his family attempted to escape to the countryside.
Marie Antoinette's lover, the Swedish count Axel von Fersen, helped arrange the escape. However,
they were caught at Varennes and imprisoned in the Temple in Paris. Louis XVI was separated
from his family in 1792 and the French monarchy was abolished by the revolution that same year.
However Louis' younger sister, Elisabeth, remained with the family and became the children's nurse.
Marie Therese still had her family around her, and they took solace in each other
but that would change in the coming months. The revolutionaries were most worried about Louis XVI,
Marie Antoinette, and their son and heir to the throne, Louis Charles. They
didn't consider Marie Therese as closely, since she couldn't hold any real power.
And so began the hardships that would affect Marie Therese's entire life.
Marie Therese's father, King Louis XVI, was beheaded on January 21st,
1793. The rest of his family remained in the Temple in Paris.
Over the next few years, Marie Therese was separated from her family members one by one.
Her younger brother, Louis Charles, was taken in July 1793 and kept in a small, dark room,
where he was ignored and eventually died either due to disease or neglect.
In August of 1793, Marie Antoinette was taken to
the Conciergerie and executed by guillotine in October.
Marie Therese's aunt Elisabeth was taken away from her the following May, also to be executed.
After the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the revolution continued with looting in the
countryside. Two years later, insurgents led by the Jacobins arrested the king. At this time,
Marie Therese was imprisoned with the rest of her family.
After her mother and aunt were taken away, she was bored much of the time. She could hear her brother
crying through the walls and being beaten by his jailers. She wrote on the walls of the Temple,
"Marie-Therese Charlotte is the most unhappy person in the world. She can obtain no news
of her mother; nor be reunited with her, though she has asked it a thousand times."
Marie Therese, having been imprisoned at such a young age, was still very close to her mother.
It's clear from this message that she was deeply unhappy
and wished for her mothers comfort while she was alone in prison.
In August 1795, Marie Therese was told that her mother, brother, and aunt had died. She was
allowed to leave the Temple a few months later in December for the first time in three years,
four months, and five days. She was the sole survivor of her immediate family.
Shortly after, the young Marie Therese departed France for Vienna but she did not look on her
Austrian relatives kindly, feeling that they had abandoned her mother. She did not fit in well at
the Austrian court, though she was allowed to wear mourning clothes in honor of her family.
In 1799, Marie Therese was married to her first cousin, the Duke of Angoûleme. This
match was her parents' choice, and so it was not one Marie would have contested. Royal heirs knew
they had to marry for the good of the crown, and so Marie Therese wasn't against a match
chosen for her by her parents. She was given her father's ring that had her
mother's initials engraved into it and on receiving it, reportedly, cried with joy.
Napoleon Bonaparte brought the French Revolution to an
end when he seized power in 1799 and became France's first consul.
But Marie Therese was vehemently opposed to Bonaparte's tempestuous rule.
"Blow them up. MOVE IT!"
Though she was married in Russia, Marie Therese and her uncle, now styled Louis XVIII,
had to leave when the Russian Emperor Paul I put his support behind Napoleon. They left incognito,
using the names Count of Lille and Marchioness of La Meilleraye. Marie Therese's husband eventually
joined them in Warsaw, where they were protected by the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III.
They were able to return to Russia with the support of the new tsar, Alexander I.
However, after Alexander signed a treaty with Napoleon, Marie Therese and her uncle
fled to the United Kingdom, under the protection of the Duke of Buckingham.
There, she spent much of her time in prayer,
meditation, or reading. She was not very interested in court life, as her uncle was,
though she continued to mark the anniversary of her father' death every January.
After Napoleon's fall in 1814 the monarchy was restored and Marie Therese returned to France
with her husband, father-in-law, and uncle now King Louis XVIII. When Napoleon escaped his island
prison of Elba in 1815 and invaded France, several members of the royal family fled France in fear.
But, Marie Therese refused to leave and stayed put at Bordeaux, which apparently impressed Napoleon.
She was able to visit the cemetery where her parents had been buried.
A doctor who had treated her brother's body after his death had stolen his heart,
and it eventually ended up buried with their parents..
It is worth noting that the monarchy's hold on the country would continue to be shaky.
Marie Therese had to flee France a few times after 1824,
when the change in rulers caused tensions to rise. Regardless, Marie Therese set up a
court of her own at the Tuileries, where her family had once been held captive.
In fact, she actually succeeded in setting up a new court in the once glorious Parisian palace.
Marie Therese became the dauphine of France after her uncle Louis XVIII died and her father-in-law
Charles X became king in 1824. At the age of 45, Marie Therese had ascended to her mother's former
position, one that Marie Antoinette had achieved upon her arrival in France so many years earlier.
Charles X attempted to bring back Louis XVI's style of ruling, which did not suit the liberals
in France. During the elections in 1830, that faction came out in full force. Bad harvests also
caused a negative economy, and worker protests quickly turned into a full-blown revolution.
Due to the July Revolution of 1830, Marie Therese's father-in-law,
Charles X, abdicated in favor of his son and Marie's husband,
the Duke of Angouleme. He then abdicated for his nephew twenty minutes later. So,
Marie Therese took on her mother's role, the Queen of France, for nearly half an hour.
Once again, Marie Therese was forced to give up her royal position and her
homeland to live in exile. She and her husband ended up in England again and
were allowed to stay under the condition that they gave up any marks of royalty.
Marie Therese's childhood teachings of compassion and respect helped her
to accept her second exile gracefully. She and her husband spent the rest of their life
quietly jumping from royal court to court across Europe.
During her second exile, Marie Therese began writing her memoirs, accurately titled The
Ruin of a Princess. She and her husband stayed in Edinburgh until 1833 and later moved to Prague.
As the years passed after the French Revolution,
royalists came to think that Marie Therese's younger brother and the dauphin, Louis Charles,
had somehow escaped his jailers and that another dead boy was buried in his place.
Hundreds of Louis Charles imposters appeared, though Marie Therese recognized none of them.
Several who came forward ended up with wealth which led others to join the fray.
Marie Therese's early imprisonment and the loss of her immediate family had devastated
the young girl. Yet, this surge of interest in her brother's possible
survival was just another way the loss of her family continued to pain her.
However, in 2000, the uncertainty was permanently settled. DNA testing and
a lock of Marie Therese's hair matched the sample of the dauphin's heart, which a doctor
had smuggled out when the boy was autopsied. Louis Charles actually had died in prison.
Marie Therese died of pneumonia, on October 19, 1851, having settled in Schloss Frohsdorf,
near Vienna. Her husband died seven years earlier in 1844. They never had any children.
Marie Therese of France is buried with her husband in what is now Slovenia.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.