



Produced by David Widger





MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF

MARIE ANTOINETTE,

QUEEN OF FRANCE



Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan,
First Lady in Waiting to the Queen




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Duchesse du Barry

Princesse de Lamballe

The Parisian Bonne

Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette

Beaumarchais

The Reveille

Madame Adelaide as Diana

The Bastille

Opening of The States General

Louis XVI.

Marie Antoinette on the way to the Guillotine

Madame Campan




PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.


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.

Louis XVI.  meant to write his own memoirs; the manner in which his
private papers were arranged indicated this design.  The Queen also had
the same intention; she long preserved a large correspondence, and a great
number of minute reports, made in the spirit and upon the event of the
moment.  But after the 20th of June, 1792, she was obliged to burn the
larger portion of what she had so collected, and the remainder were
conveyed out of France.

Considering the rank and situations of the persons I have named as capable
of elucidating by their writings the history of our political storms, it
will not be imagined that I aim at placing myself on a level with them;
but I have spent half my life either with the daughters of Louis XV. or
with Marie Antoinette.  I knew the characters of those Princesses; I
became privy to some extraordinary 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 I was placed about the Princesses, the daughters of
Louis XV., in the capacity of reader.  I was acquainted with the Court of
Versailles before the time of the marriage of Louis XVI. with the
Archduchess Marie Antoinette.




MADAME CAMPAN


My father, who was employed in the department of Foreign Affairs, enjoyed
the reputation due to his talents and to his useful labours.  He had
travelled much.  Frenchmen, on their return home from foreign countries,
bring with them a love for their own, increased in warmth; and