Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Complete E-Book

Jenne Louise Henriette Campan

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Louis XVI. possessed an immense crowd of confidants, advisers, and guides; he selected them even from among the factions which attacked him. Never, perhaps, did he make a full disclosure to any one of them, and certainly he spoke with sincerity, to but very few. He invariably kept the reins of all secret intrigues in his own hand; and thence, doubtless, arose the want of cooperation and the weakness which were so conspicuous in his measures. From these causes considerable chasms will be found in the detailed history of the Revolution. In order to become thoroughly acquainted with the latter years of the reign of Louis XV., memoirs written by the Duc de Choiseul, the Duc d'Aiguillon, the Marechal de Richelieu, [I heard Le Marechal de Richelieu desire M. Campan, who was librarian to the Queen, not to buy the Memoirs which would certainly be attributed to him after his death, declaring them false by anticipation; and adding that he was ignorant of orthography, and had never amused himself with writing. Shortly after the death of the Marshal, one Soulavie put forth Memoirs of the Marechal de Richelieu.] and the Duc de La Vauguyon, should be before us. To give us a faithful portrait of the unfortunate reign of Louis XVI., the Marechal du Muy, M. de Maurepas, M. de Vergennes, M. de Malesherbes, the Duc d'Orleans, M. de La Fayette, the Abby de Vermond, the Abbe Montesquiou, Mirabeau, the Duchesse de Polignac, and the Duchesse de Luynes should have noted faithfully in writing all the transactions in which they took decided parts. The secret political history of a later period has been disseminated among a much greater number of persons; there are Ministers who have published memoirs, but only when they had their own measures to justify, and then they confined themselves to the vindication of their own characters, without which powerful motive they probably would have written nothing. In general, those nearest to the Sovereign, either by birth or by office, have left no memoirs; and in absolute monarchies the mainsprings of great events will be found in particulars which the most exalted persons alone could know. Those who have had but little under their charge find no subject in it for a book; and those who have long borne the burden of public business conceive themselves to be forbidden by duty, or by respect for authority, to disclose all they know. Others, again, preserve notes, with the intention of reducing them to order when they shall have reached the period of a happy leisure; vain illusion of the ambitious, which they cherish, for the most part, but as a veil to conceal from their sight the hateful image of their inevitable downfall! and when it does at length take place, despair or chagrin deprives them of fortitude to dwell upon the dazzling period which they never cease to regret.

Leseprobe

Contents

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.

MEMOIR OF MADAME CAMPAN.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER IX.

Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Complete

Mme. Campan

© David De Angelis 2017 - All rights reserved

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.

Louis XVI. possessed an immense crowd of confidants, advisers,and guides; he selected them even from among the factions whichattacked him. Never, perhaps, did he make a full disclosure to anyone of them, and certainly he spokewith sincerity, to but very few.He invariably kept the reins of all secret intrigues in his ownhand; and thence, doubtless, arose the want of cooperation and theweakness which were so conspicuous in his measures. From thesecauses considerable chasms will be found in the detailed history ofthe Revolution.

In order to become thoroughly acquainted with the latter yearsof the reign of Louis XV., memoirs written by the Duc de Choiseul,the Duc d’Aiguillon, the Marechal de Richelieu, and the Ducde La Vauguyon, should be before us.

[I heard Le Marechal de Richelieu desire M. Campan, who waslibrarian to the Queen, not to buy the Memoirs which wouldcertainly be attributed to him after his death, declaring themfalse by anticipation; and adding that he was ignorant oforthography, and had never amused himself with writing. Shortlyafter the death of the Marshal, one Soulavie put forth Memoirs ofthe Marechal de Richelieu.]

To give us a faithful portrait of the unfortunate reign of LouisXVI., the Marechal du Muy, M. de Maurepas, M. de Vergennes, M. deMalesherbes, the Duc d’Orleans, M. de La Fayette, the Abby deVermond, the Abbe Montesquiou, Mirabeau, the Duchesse de Polignac,and the Duchesse de Luynes should have noted faithfully in writingall the transactions in which they took decided parts. The secretpolitical history of a later period has been disseminated among amuch greater number of persons; there are Ministers who havepublished memoirs, but only when they had their own measures tojustify, and then they confined themselves to the vindication oftheir own characters, without which powerful motive they probablywould have written nothing. In general, those nearest to theSovereign, either by birth or by office, have left no memoirs; andin absolute monarchies the mainsprings of great events will befound in particulars which the most exalted persons alone couldknow. Those who have had but little under their charge find nosubject in it for a book; and those who have long borne the burdenof public business conceive themselves to be forbidden by duty, orby respect for authority, to disclose all they know. Others, again,preserve notes, with the intention of reducing them to order whenthey shall have reached the period of a happy leisure; vainillusion of the ambitious, which they cherish, for the most part,but as a veil to conceal from their sight the hateful image oftheir inevitable downfall! and when it does at length take place,despair or chagrin deprives them of fortitude to dwell upon thedazzling period which they never cease to regret.

Louis XVI. meant to write his own memoirs; the manner in whichhis private papers were arranged indicated this design. The Queenalso had the same intention; she long preserved a largecorrespondence, and a great number of minute reports, made in thespirit and uponthe event of the moment. But after the 20th of June,1792, she was obliged to burn the larger portion of what she had socollected, and the remainder were conveyed out of France.

Considering the rankand situations of the persons I have namedas capable of elucidating by their writings the history of ourpolitical storms, it will not be imagined that I aim at placingmyself on a level with them; but I have spent half my life eitherwith the daughtersof Louis XV. or with Marie Antoinette. I knew thecharacters of those Princesses; I became privy to someextraordinary facts, the publication of which may be interesting,and the truth of the details will form the merit of my work.

I was very young when Iwas placed about the Princesses, thedaughters of Louis XV., in the capacity of reader. I was acquaintedwith the Court of Versailles before the time of the marriage ofLouis XVI. with the Archduchess Marie Antoinette.

My father, who was employed in the department of ForeignAffairs, enjoyed the reputation due to his talents and to hisuseful labours. He had travelled much. Frenchmen, on their returnhome from foreign countries, bring with them a love for their own,increased in warmth; and no man was more penetrated with thisfeeling, which ought to be the first virtue of every placeman, thanmy father. Men of high title, academicians, and learned men, bothnatives and foreigners, sought my father’s acquaintance,andwere gratified by being admitted into his house.

Twenty years before the Revolution I often heard it remarkedthat the imposing character of the power of Louis XIV. was nolonger to be found in the Palace of Versailles; that theinstitutions of the ancient monarchy were rapidly sinking; and thatthe people, crushed beneath the weight of taxes, were miserable,though silent; but that they began to give ear to the bold speechesof the philosophers, who loudly proclaimed their sufferings andtheir rights;and, in short, that the age would not pass awaywithout the occurrence of some great outburst, which would unsettleFrance, and change the course of its progress.

Those who thus spoke were almost all partisans of M.Turgot’s system of administration: theywere Mirabeau thefather, Doctor Quesnay, Abbe Bandeau, and Abbe Nicoli, charged’affaires to Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and asenthusiastic an admirer of the maxims of the innovators as hisSovereign.

My father sincerely respected the purity of intention of thesepoliticians. With them he acknowledged many abuses in theGovernment; but he did not give these political sectarians creditfor the talent necessary for conducting a judicious reform. He toldthem frankly that in the art of moving the greatmachine ofGovernment, the wisest of them was inferior to a good magistrate;and that if ever the helm of affairs should be put into theirhands, they would be speedily checked in the execution of theirschemes by the immeasurable difference existing between the mostbrilliant theories and the simplest practice of administration.

Destiny having formerly placed me near crowned heads, I nowamuse my solitude when in retirement with collecting a variety offacts which may prove interesting to my familywhen Ishall be nomore. The idea of collecting all the interesting materials which mymemory affords occurred to me from reading the work entitled“Paris, Versailles, and the Provinces in the EighteenthCentury.” That work, composed by a man accustomed to the bestsociety, is full of piquant anecdotes, nearly all of which havebeen recognised as true by the contemporaries of the author. I haveput together all that concerned the domestic life of an unfortunatePrincess, whose reputation is not yet cleared of thestains itreceived from the attacks of calumny, and who justly merited adifferent lot in life, a different place in the opinion of mankindafter her fall. These memoirs, which were finished ten years ago,have met with the approbation of some persons; andmy son may,perhaps, think proper to print them after my decease.

J. L. H. C.

—When Madame Campan wrote these lines, she did notanticipate that the death of her son would precede her own.

MEMOIR OF MADAME CAMPAN.

JEANNE LOUISE HENRIETTE GENET was born in Paris on the 6th of October, 1752. M. Genet, her father, had obtained, through his own merit and the influence of the Duc de Choiseul, the place of first clerkin the Foreign Office.

Literature, which he had cultivated in his youth, was often the solace of his leisure hours. Surrounded by a numerous family, he made the instruction of his children his chief recreation, and omitted nothing which was necessary to render them highly accomplished. His clever and precocious daughter Henriette was very early accustomed to enter society, and to take an intelligent interest in current topics and public events. Accordingly, many of her relations being connected with the Court or holding official positions, she amassed a fund of interesting recollections and characteristic anecdotes, some gathered from personal experience, others handed down by old friends of the family.

“The first event which made any impression on me in mychildhood,” she says in her reminiscences, “was the attempt of Damiens to assassinate Louis XV. This occurrence struck me so forcibly that the most minute details relating to the confusion and grief which prevailed at Versailles on that day seem as presentto my imagination as the most recent events. I had dined with my father and mother, in company with one of their friends. The drawing-room was lighted up with a number of candles, and four card-tables were already occupied, when a friend of the gentlemanof the house came in, with a pale and terrified countenance, and said, in a voice scarcely audible, ‘I bring you terrible news. The King has been assassinated!’ Two ladies in the company fainted; a brigadier of the Body Guards threw down his cards and cried out, ‘I do not wonder at it; it is those rascally Jesuits.’—‘What are you saying, brother?’ cried a lady, flying to him; ‘would you get yourself arrested?’—‘Arrested! For what? For unmasking those wretches who want a bigot for a King?’ My father came in;he recommended circumspection, saying that the blow was not mortal, and that all meetings ought to be suspended at so critical a moment. He had brought the chaise for my mother, who placed me on her knees. We lived in the Avenue de Paris, and throughout our drive I heard incessant cries and sobs from the footpaths.

“At last I saw a man arrested; he was an usher of the King’s chamber, who had gone mad, and was crying out, ‘Yes, I know them; the wretches! the villains!’ Our chaise was stopped by this bustle.My mother recognised the unfortunate man who had been seized; she gave his name to the trooper who had stopped him. The poor usher was therefore merely conducted to the gens d’armes’ guardroom, which was then in the avenue.

“I have often heard M. de Landsmath, equerry and master of the hounds, who used to come frequently to my father’s, say that on the news of the attempt on the King’s life he instantly repaired to his Majesty. I cannot repeat the coarse expressions he made use of to encourage his Majesty;but his account of the affair, long afterwards, amused the parties in which he was prevailed on to relate it, when all apprehensions respecting the consequences of the event had subsided. This M. de Landsmath was an old soldier, who hadgiven proofs of extraordinary valour; nothing had been able to soften his manners or subdue his excessive bluntness to the respectful customs of the Court. The King was very fond of him. He possessed prodigious strength, and had often contended with Marechal Saxe, renownedfor his great bodily power, in trying the strength of their respective wrists.

[One day when the King was hunting in the forest of St. Germain, Landemath, riding before him, wanted a cart, filled with the slime of a pond that had just been cleansed, to draw up out of the way. The carter resisted, and even answered with impertinence. Landsmath, without dismounting, seized him by the breast of his coat, lifted him up, and threw him into his cart.—MADAME CAMPAN.]

“M. de Landsmath had a thundering voice. When he came into the King’s apartment he found the Dauphin and Mesdames, his Majesty’s daughters, there; the Princesses, in tears, surrounded the King’s bed. Send out all these weeping women, Sire,’ said the old equerry; ‘I want to speak to you alone: The Kingmade a sign to the Princesses to withdraw. ‘Come,’ said Landsmath, ‘your wound is nothing; you had plenty of waistcoats and flannels on.’ Then uncovering his breast, ‘Look here,’ said he, showing four or five great scars, ‘these are something like wounds;I received them thirty years ago; now cough as loud as you can.’ The King did so. ‘‘Tis nothing at all,’ said Landsmath; ‘you must laugh at it; we shall hunt a stag together in four days.’—‘But suppose the blade was poisoned,’ said the King. ‘Old grandams’tales,’ replied Landsmath; ‘if it had been so, the waistcoats and flannels would have rubbed the poison off.’ The King was pacified, and passed a very good night.

“His Majesty one day asked M. de Landsmath how old he was. He was aged, and by no means fondof thinking of his age; he evaded the question. A fortnight later, Louis XV. took a paper out of his pocket and read aloud: ‘On such a day in the month of one thousand six hundred and eighty, was baptised by me, rector of ———, the son of the high and mighty lord,’ etc. ‘What’s that?’ said Landsmath, angrily; ‘has your Majesty been procuring the certificate of my baptism?’—‘There it is, you see, Landsmath,’ said the King. ‘Well, Sire, hide it as fast as you can; a prince entrusted with the happiness of twenty-five millions of people ought not wilfully to hurt the feelings of a single individual.’