Friday, February 16, 2007

Charitable Works of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette

With the approach of Lent we recall the duties of every Christian to apply themselves more fervently to alms-giving during that sacred season. In pre-revolutionary France it was for the King and the Queen to give an example to everyone else in this regard. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette took this duty seriously and throughout their reign did what they could to help the needy.

During the fireworks celebrating the marriage of the young prince and princess in May 1774, there was a stampede in which many people were killed. Louis and Antoinette gave all of their private spending money for a year to relieve the suffering of the victims and their families. They became very popular with the common people as a result, which was reflected in the adulation with which they were received when the Dauphin took his wife to Paris on her first "official" visit in June 1773. Marie-Antoinette's reputation for sweetness and mercy became even more entrenched in 1774, when as the new Queen she asked that the people be relieved of a tax called "The Queen's belt," customary at the beginning of each reign. "Belts are no longer worn," she said. It was only the onslaught of revolutionary propaganda that would eventually destroy her reputation.

Louis XVI often visited the poor in their homes and villages, distributing alms from his own purse. Madame Campan records in her Memoirs that during the difficult winter of 1776, the king oversaw the distribution of firewood among the peasants. The king was responsible for many humanitarian reforms. He went incognito to hospitals, prisons, and factories so as to gain first-hand knowledge of the conditions in which the people lived and worked.

The King and Queen were patrons of the Maison Philanthropique, a society founded by Louis XVI which helped the aged, blind and widows. The queen taught her daughter Madame Royale to wait upon peasant children, to sacrifice her Christmas gifts so as to by fuel and blankets for the destitute, and to bring baskets of food to the sick. Antoinette started a home for unwed mothers at the royal palace of Versailles. She adopted three poor children to be raised with her own, as well as overseeing the upbringing of several needy children, whose education she paid for, while caring for their families. She brought several peasant families to live on her farm at Trianon, building cottages for them. There was food for the hungry distributed every day at Versailles, at the King's command.

During the famine of 1787-88, the royal family sold much of their flatware to buy grain for the people, and themselves ate the cheap barley bread in order to be able to give more to the hungry. There were many other things they did; what I mentioned here is taken from Vincent Cronin's Louis and Antoinette, as well as Marguerite Jallut's and Philippe Huisman's biography of the Marie-Antoinette. The king and queen did not see helping the poor as anything extraordinary, but as a basic Christian duty. The royal couple's almsgiving stopped only with their incarceration in the Temple in August 1792, for then they had nothing left to give but their lives. Share

14 comments:

Luku said...

Its amazing how I never knew these things about the King and Queen. More amazing is how these good deeds were erased from the memories of the people of france because of the revolution. So sad.

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

the link to "many humanitarian reforms" is to a message no longer existing - where did the info go, please?

elena maria vidal said...

It is fixed.

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

I still get:

Page not found
Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog Tea at Trianon does not exist.

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

@ shanee:

"More amazing is how these good deeds were erased from the memories of the people of france because of the revolution. So sad."

Not immediately becuase of the Revolution I think. The Restauration had some popularity, I hope - rather because of near-compulsory schools over-exposing the famous caricature of the social pyramid under III Republic after some other Revolutions.

elena maria vidal said...

Reload the page; it works now.

May said...

Dear Elena Maria, I wanted to share these links(I'm not going to say what they are, so it will be a surprise);

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoikeXcrdW4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j50oU6cy1w&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh4Kgya4tGs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZfrLaZTrxE&feature=related

elena maria vidal said...

Thanks, I'll check them out!

MelindaL said...

I tried to comment earlier, but I think some technical glitch ate it, so I am trying again.

Thank you so much for doing this site! It is so nice to see the truth instead of the lies about Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI. Your site has helped me in my own research when the library holdings locally were quite thin.

I have prayed for the intercession of Louis XVI many times, and he is a wonderful intercessor!

Thank you and please keep up the good work!

elena maria vidal said...

Thank you, Melinda, for your comments and kind words!

John Ritchie said...

I'm looking for documentation to source one of the habits of Marie Antoinette: Before the court began entertainment, the queen would get a purse from the chaplain and personally go from noble to noble, collecting alms for the poor.

If you have any information on this, please let me know.
Thank you.

elena maria vidal said...

John, that is in the Memoirs of Madame de la Tour du Pin, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. I cite it in my book, Marie-Antoinette, Daughter of the Caesars. You may want to order my book just for research purposes because it provides lots of notes and sources.

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

Madame de la Tour du Pin, a relative of the French monarchist and corporativist - René de La Tour du Pin?

Him of whom Charles Maurras was asked if he belonged to Action Française and of whom he answered "no, it is Action Française which belongs to de la Tour du Pin"?

elena maria vidal said...

I think she was his great great grandmother.