Marie Antoinette's Daughter: The 15-Year-Old Left Alone in the Temple Tower

At fifteen, Marie Antoinette's daughter Marie-Thérèse was left alone in the Temple tower, never told her mother was dead. From 9 May 1794 she spent more than a year on the third floor of the tower in Paris, with no woman beside her and no candle after dark. The men guarding her took her knives, then the tinderbox she used to heat water for her feet. At sixteen she wrote it down herself. Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte de France, Madame Royale, had been a prisoner of the French Revolution since she was thirteen. Her notebook of thirty-five and a half pages is read here beside the papers of the men who guarded her: the Paris Commune's minute of 19 July 1794, the order of 20 June 1795 that named a woman to keep her company, and the receipt signed for her at Riehen. Her brother, Louis-Charles, the boy royalists called Louis XVII, died one floor below her. The episode also counts her days alone. The figure of 402, often repeated, is wrong. SOURCES Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte de France, Mémoire sur la captivité des princes et princesses ses parents (Plon, 1892), from her autograph Royal Memoirs on the French Revolution, trans. John Wilson Croker (1823) Katharine Prescott Wormeley, The Ruin of a Princess (New York, 1912) Alcide de Beauchesne, Louis XVII, sa vie, son agonie, sa mort, vol. II (1852; 1871 ed.) Mémoires de Madame la duchesse de Tourzel, ed. duc des Cars (1883) Félix d'Hézecques, Souvenirs d'un page de la cour de Louis XVI (1873) Imbert de Saint-Amand, The Youth of the Duchess of Angoulême (1892) Stefan Hess, "Gefangenenaustausch in Riehen", Gemeindelexikon Riehen Translations from the French are our own. PORTRAITS AND DOCUMENTS SHOWN Christian von Mechel after Antoine-François Sergent, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, 1795, National Gallery of Art, Washington Valentine Green after Charles Dabos, Princess Maria Charlotte Theresa, from a miniature taken at Basle, 1795, BnF (public domain) Anonymous, Madame Royale au Temple, 1793, and Marie Thérèse Charlotte dans la prison du Temple, drawn by telescope, 1795, BnF (public domain) J.-B. Vérité after H.-P. Danloux, Marie Therese Charlotte de France, BnF (public domain) J. H. Löschenkohl (publ.), Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Wien Museum Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Marie-Antoinette and her Children, 1787, Versailles (public domain) Alexander Kucharski, Marie-Antoinette au Temple, Musée Carnavalet; Kucharski and after, Louis-Charles (public domain) Joseph-Siffred Duplessis, Louis XVI, Musée Condé (public domain) After Louis-Simon Boizot, Élisabeth de France (public domain); Élisabeth in prison, 10 May 1794, Rijksmuseum Musée Carnavalet / Paris Musées: her handwriting exercise, Temple, 1792 to 1795; Temple tower drawings and prints by J.-A. Auvray, L. Guyot, F. A. Pernot, J.-J. Lequeu and anonymous engravers; the tower model and floor plan; Barras by P.-F. Bertonnier; Robespierre, 10 Thermidor, after Duplessis-Bertaux; the duchesse de Tourzel by J. Porreau; the arrival at Basle, 1795; Louis XVII medal; G.-H. Manesse, Sainte-Marguerite cemetery BnF (public domain): Temple tower prints from the De Vinck collection; J.J.H. Gründ, Les Adieux de Louis XVI; Bouillon and Vérité, La séparation de Marie-Antoinette, 1795; Élisabeth notified, 10 May 1794; David and Denon, Le Représentant du peuple; Cléry's plan of the second floor Die Trennung Ludwigs des XVIten von seiner Familie im Tempel, BnF via Stanford Libraries (public domain by age; BnF reproduction terms) Archives nationales: plan of the Temple tower; death record of Louis XVII, 1795 (public domain) French School, Tour du Temple, c.1795; The Temple at Paris, NYPL; Hoffbauer, Paris à travers les âges (all public domain) Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Last Words of Marie Antoinette; The Mysterious Urn Two prints of revolutionary committees and deputies, 1794 (public domain) Christian von Mechel, View of Basle, Swiss Federal Archives, Gugelmann Collection (no licence stated) Départ de Marie-Thérèse de France, 19 décembre 1795, Musée de la Révolution française, Vizille Pages from Beauchesne (1871), Wormeley (1912) and La Harpe (1780), Internet Archive (public domain) Thumbnails: Mechel after Sergent (cut out of its ground on one tile), Green after Dabos, and the Tour du Temple, c.1795. Scenes and faces no painter recorded are AI-generated illustrations in the style of the period. The real portraits, documents and photographs are credited above. CHAPTERS 0:00 At fifteen she was left alone in the tower 1:02 Thirty-Five and a Half Pages 3:30 We Shall See 6:39 Finished by Nine 9:28 Saturday, 19 July 1794 13:04 Six in the Morning 15:42 One Floor Below 18:26 The Order of 20 June 22:15 Signed For at Riehen An Uncrowned Queens Production. #MadameRoyale #MarieAntoinette #FrenchHistory