As promised and voted on, the next personal profile is on Marie Antoinette – herein known by her Austrian name, Maria Antonia. Next one is Hidalgo.
God is a Frenchman Personal Profiles: Maria Antonia von Habsburg (1755-1838)
Princess Maria Antonia of Austria was born in November, 1755 to Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Franz. She was the third daughter of the empress to survive childhood. Her upbringing was typical of high-born girls, with her education emphasizing the qualities and skills needed to be a desirable match for a foreign prince. Maria Theresa held years-long negotiations with Louis XV of France on a betrothal between Maria Antonia and Louis-August, both children at the time. Such a marriage would have helped to cement the Franco-Austrian alliance that won the Six Years War. Ironically the war victory is what caused the marriage negotiations to collapse. Maria Theresa found herself distrusting Louis XV in his victory, fearing his ambitions in Italy and Germany.
The marriage drama for young Maria Antonia did not end there. In 1768 the Habsburgs successfully arranged a betrothal to Friedrich August, the young Elector of Saxony. The match was expected to cement the loyalty of the House of Wettin to Austria. Shortly after the betrothal announcement, Louis XV stole the limelight by announcing the wedding of his grandson the Dauphin to Maria Amalia, Friedrich August’s younger sister. This Franco-Saxon match meant that Saxony’s loyalty would be in contention, rather than clearly aligned with the Habsburgs or Bourbons.
Maria Antonia wed Friedrich August in May, 1771 just as France and Britain returned to war. Austria and the Holy Roman Empire (except for Hanover) maintained neutrality in the conflict for two years until a French victory looked increasingly likely to upset the balance of power in Europe. Still a teenager, Maria Antonia’s family encouraged her to pressure her husband to contribute men and treasure to the war-effort, but Friedrich August followed the lead of Prussia and kept to his neutrality, navigating between the currents of France and Austria. The neutrality pained her, but she had little influence in the policy decisions of her husband. The young princess gave birth to her first child, a daughter Maria Johanna, in 1779. Her first son and heir to Saxony was born in 1781, Josef Wilhelm.
After the war and Austria’s losses, Maria Antonia’s husband was made King of Saxony, making her the Queen. She felt conflicted by the title, as her triumph came at the expense of her family. She took comfort in her sister Maria Carolina, who married Karl Wilhelm of Saxe-Meiningen and frequently lodged at the Queen’s apartments in Dresden. The sisters threw unparalleled parties for the high-born of Saxony in the late-1770s, ingratiating themselves with the Saxon nobility and launched a number of charitable causes, which introduced them more to the Saxon people. In 1779, Maria Carolina’s husband was made King of Bavaria, which pulled her away to Munich to serve as Queen; this move was a painful change for the young Queen of Saxony.
For his part, King Friedrich August made a strong effort to provide the Queen with happiness and independence, granting her Schloss Moritzburg as her personal residence. She decorated the castle at great expense, which generated no shortage of controversy among the Saxon bourgeoisie. The Queen’s ladies-in-waiting ended up being a helpful social connection for her, giving her a number of trusted confidantes, particularly Sophie Friederike the Princess of Thun and Taxis who became Maria Antonia’s closest friend in the Saxon court. She also valued her role in the world of fashion. While she generally followed the trends set by her sister-in-law, Queen Marie Amalie of France, Maria Antonia had a famously independent streak in her hair and dress styles, most notably her love of feathers and faux-birds incorporated into her hairdo.
In 1780, a pair of French jewelers, Charles Auguste Boehmer and Paul Bassange, approached the Queen with a fabulous diamond necklace, first commissioned by King Louis XV of France, but now unclaimed. The cost of 2,000,000 French livres was too steep even for the Queen and though tempted, after considering the offer and viewing the necklace, she rejected the sale. Boehmer, desperate to sell the jewelry, attempted to force the Queen’s hand by leaking correspondence to the Saxon press, which proved to be a grave error for the jeweler. The Leipzig press ultimately rallied around the Queen once it came to light that she refused the purchase, and a furious King Friedrich August expelled Boehmer and Bassange from the country. The Diamond necklace scandal continued in 1781 when the jewelers were robbed by highwaymen on their journey out of Saxony. The King’s troops tracked down the thieves before the diamonds were hocked. Friedrich August ultimately purchased the necklace for his wife at a cost of 1,250,000 livres, a severely discounted price, but still a cost that created controversy. Despite this, he presented it to his wife as a means of apology for going through the scandalous ordeal. For many years, the Queen refused to wear it.
In 1786, she was painted by the female French portraitist Vigée Le Brun (see left). The painting was cutting-edge in style for a royal portrait with the Queen in informal dress. It created some negative chatter in the press, but many marveled at the confidence of her pose and gaze. Several other German nobles commissioned similarly-styled portraits from Le Brun and others. A "Saxon Antonia Portrait" became a style in central Europe from the mid-1880s through the 1890s.
Maria Antonia bore two more children, one of which survived childhood. She named her second son Anton Josef, born in 1786. After Anton's birth, the Queen spent more time in her Dresden apartments alongside her husband and children. She increasingly became a confidante of her husband and played an important role in the next two decades towards abolishing traditional serfdom and land reforms, which enabled her to grow beyond the financial scandals early in her husband’s reign and ingratiate herself with the people. In 1799 her daughter was wed to the heir of Hesse-Cassel. Two years later, her eldest son Josef married Louisa, a princess of Hesse-Darmstadt. By 1805, Maria Antonia had two grandchildren, one from each of her two eldest children.
She greatly struggled with her husband’s stubborn insistence on neutrality in both the 1807 and 1814 conflicts between Austria and France. The royal couple were reported to have tremendous rows over the issue, particularly in 1807. The King proclaimed that he maintained his love for his Austrian wife, but that his heart also followed his beloved sister the Queen Mother at Versailles. He had always claimed to get on better with his nephew Louis XVII of France, than his wife’s nephew Franz II. For both wars Maria Antonia sequestered herself at Moritzburg and refused to see her husband for months or years at a time. Her 1807 depression deepened when her beloved son Anton was killed in a
Mensur fencing duel in early 1808 at the University of Leipzig, which he had insisted on attending despite admonishments from his parents. While the death caused her much pain, it also drew her back to her husband, at least until the next war seven years later.
After the Treaty of Heidelberg in 1817 Friedrich Augustus became Holy Roman Emperor, claiming the imperial seat from Maria Antonia’s nephew in Austria. She strived to maintain the Habsburg connection to the HRE throne and threw herself into the ceremonial role of Empress. She toured the German realm and became a well-known figure, in part due to her likeness on a denomination of Thaler coinage. Her state visits in each of the German states were a badge of honor for each ruler, even for her humiliated nephew in Austria. He thanked her personally for her graciousness and kindness in the face of his misfortune and for her steady representation of the Habsburg family in the courts of the imperial realm.
Her eldest son, and heir to the throne, Josef Wilhelm died in a carriage accident at the age of thirty-nine in 1820. His wife had died in childbirth in 1810, leaving their three children to be raised by a cadre of nannies and tutors. Josef’s two youngest children, Karl and Louisa, born in 1808 and 1810 respectively, were sent to their grandmother’s household, while Max, his oldest son and heir, was sent to his grandfather to learn matters of state. Maria Antonia greatly enjoyed the presence of her grandchildren and they kept her mood lifted in the face of their father’s death.
Friedrich August died in 1827, leaving Maria Antonia to become a dowager queen as her grandson assumed the Saxon throne. The imperial seat returned to her nephew Franz in that year and she graciously toured with his wife as a reintroduction to the German realm. As her age advanced, she took on fewer and fewer state roles, though she frequently expressed fears of coming European discord as the political mood in France turned in the 1830s. The Dowager Queen of Saxony died in February 1838, just as her grandson Maximilian prepared Saxony for its first war in over seventy years, unable to keep the strict neutral line of his grandfather. Maria Antonia, Queen of Saxony, died in her favored residence at Moritzburg, with several of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren by her side. In her life she successfully navigated scandals, international crises, and personal tragedies, and was remembered well by the Saxon people, as well as those throughout the German world.
